


Desire's Daughter

by Trilies



Series: Sevenfold [3]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, F/M, Gen, God of Death, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Polyandry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-02-26 08:32:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13231995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trilies/pseuds/Trilies
Summary: "She was still young, then, barely having stepped out from the embrace of her sole parent- the Merchant, the Shadowalker. Yet despite this, she showed her unending kindness and still tended to those who called to her. Love and blessings to her net of pearls, each carrying a soul to be taken to the realm beyond, mist willing."The story of Fate and Foam's birth, Desire's most beloved child, and how she came into her godhood both with those surrounding her and the realm she carved.





	1. The Myth

Early in the days of humanity, during cold winter, Fate and Foam went walking.   
  
She was still young, then, barely having stepped out from the embrace of her sole parent- the Merchant, the Shadowalker. Yet despite this, she showed her unending kindness and still tended to those who called to her. Love and blessings to her net of pearls, each carrying a soul to be taken to the realm beyond, mist willing.   
  
As she went traveling from one place to the other, she ventured through a forest to shorten the way. It as only meant to be a small trip and yet she became sidetracked. There before her path was an injured raven with shallow breath and bright red blood speckled onto the snow. With him was a wolf, yet not one seeking an easy meal. Instead, he curled protectively around the dying bird, and bared his teeth to even a god. He and the raven had been friends, allies, and he was closer to him than even his pack.   
  
Seeing the wolf's loyalty, so strong that he was starving from his desire to never leave his dear friend's side, Fate and Foam felt a blossom of pity. "Peace, loyal wolf," she told him. "I will not rob you of your companion. Let me draw closer, so that I may bestow upon both of you a gift."   
  
The wolf was reluctant, and unsure, and yet in the end he allowed her to venture close. In return, as she knelt by the fallen raven and his friend, Fate and Foam granted them both the position to stay by her said forevermore. They have done so ever since, the raven rescued from death, the wolf no longer alone.   
  
In return, they have acted as her assistants, guiding the souls of the deceased to her waiting arms.


	2. The Gods, the Wolf, and the Raven

She gasps for air, desperate and sudden, bubbles drawing back past gaping lips and aching throat, and Mammon smiles.   
  
It's taken long enough, but these sort of things can't be rushed in the end. They aren't Skull, or Fon. If they're going to create something, then they're going to do it  _right_. Down in the dark depths of water, where light is suffocated, they reach forward. The bubbles clutter around their wrists as they press in, rolling against their skin. Such an annoying little obstacle. No matter. In no time at all, deep in the mass, another set of fingers fumble for theirs. Sighing, pleased, Mammon gives a tug. "Come on. Let's go. You're ready now." All it takes is that one smooth pull and a figure to match their own breaches past everything. With that, they release their grip. One can't baby a child forever.   
  
Still, they're quite patient, they like to think! As they twist through the water, almost a separate liquid altogether, Mammon keeps an eye on the figure that shines despite the depths. She's clumsy, at first. Arms flailing, legs kicking, there is no grace to her at all. Against her newborn status, however, she catches on quickly. The further along they swim- the more the line blurs between otherworldly depths and common oceans- the better she becomes. Her fingers curl, scooping through the water, and her spine curves smoothly in a mimic of so many fish and seaborn mammals that they begin to pass. As she does, the bubbles still cling to her form- enhance it. They glimmer in place along her shoulders, follow the curve of her chest from collarbone to stomach, and most of the mass is past her hips. There, they form something stranger, long, make her a beautiful leviathan of a creature that snakes through the water. Mammon's pride will never stray from their own self, but still. They can't help a little bit of it spared for how their young god adapts.   
  
Soon, both of them are twisting around one another, bubbles and darkness both, and her wide eyed confusion has been exchanged for tentative delight. They entwine their fingers, a matching set, and Mammon hums. "Almost to the surface," they observe as the sun shifts its light strangely on their skin. Their young god says nothing. All she does is blink, quiet and shy and wondrous. Perhaps her nerves get the best of her. When Mammon detaches to hit the shallows of a beach, she hangs back in the waters instead to watch. Well, that's fine too, they suppose.   
  
In the mortal world, away from the realms of gods and Arcobaleno, away from the void-like depths inside the earth and oceans, Mammon allows themself to take proper form again. They're small, and all in black. Mark stretch down their cheeks and their hair frames it perfectly- that's what matters most. Everything else is optional, an amusing thing to toy with. Brushing their clothing off, a simple robe with dark fabric that shimmers strangely in the light, they look back to where their new god is waiting. She's only just poked her head up out of the water, wide eyes focused straight on Mammon, and the bubbles have now formed into strings of pearls that cling to hear hair. "Come on," they say, tapping their foot. "What do you think is going to happen?"  
  
No answer is given. Instead, she seems to tuck her chin down into her chest, water slipping up over her nose. Her hair ripples over the surface of the water where it doesn't cling to her head, and the strings of pearls- separated long and loose but still connected- follow along with the movement. For a few minutes, Mammon wonders if they're going to have to drag her out. Suddenly, she surges forward. The water rushes with her, forcing her along, and she goes tripping and flailing through the shallows. Hastily, Mammon hurries to meet her halfway, wrapping their arms around her waist and arms. "Hey-!" Both of them go stumbling back together, balance unsteady, and Mammon waits until they've come to a standstill. Lips twisted, they huff up at her. "I didn't mean  _run_  before you can walk."  
  
The pearls are no longer connected by strings. Rather, it's a whole net of them, strings shining and strange as water, and it cloaks their young god from her hair down around her bare body. When she reaches up to brush her hair to the side, she ends up pushing strings of pearls along with it. "Oh," she says, not sounding particularly remorseful. Perhaps this occurs to her, because, tentatively, she tries, "Sorry?"  
  
"You're horrible already," Mammon snorts, reaching up to swat their fingers across her hair. Pearls bump into their knuckles. "But then, I suppose you really are mine." That's enough to satisfy them, a smirk playing on their lips. Looking out into the sea, they consider what will come next. There's no need for Mammon to wonder what this child's purpose will be. They can taste humanity's desire thick and suffocating as smoke betraying fire. All that's truly left for them to do is... "Nagi," they murmur softly, tasting the name carefully on their tongue. The young god blinks at them, and Mammon's smirk widens. "My name for you is Nagi."  
  
"Nagi..." She repeats it, thoughtful and slow, before tucking her chin down against her chest again with pearls slipping down to partially obscure one eye as she does so. A smile has lit up her expression, and her eyes glimmer brighter than jewels. There is no one, Mammon decides, more perfect. Of course she is. They made her. "I like it."   
  
"I know." They share this bond, one of desire, and they can feel hers curling slow and content throughout her chest. "But that's only the name I get to call you, alright? Mine alone. To anyone else, your name is..."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Chrome." In the meadows of his oldest son, Reborn raises an eyebrow and doesn't even shift against the lone tree he's leaning against. "That's really the name you've chosen for her?" While he by far doesn't consider himself a perfect parent, at least he was able to give his sons decent names. Well, they haven't complained yet.   
  
Then again, the ghost of a girl hiding behind Mammon isn't complaining either. She merely peeks out from behind her parent, not much taller or shorter than them, and stares at Reborn and his children with wide inquisitive eyes. What seems like a net of pearls clings to her from head to toe, shimmering in the warm sunlight of Dino's realm. While he could say a lot of things, Reborn has to admit that she's certainly a great deal different than the gods that have come before. A result of Mammon's time in crafting her, or a consequence of being born deep down in what's as a mirror of the Void?  
  
From around the tree, Tsuna is playing very much the same game that she is, only with a considerable deal more fidgeting. He peers around one side of the tree, just as wide eyed as she is, only to scurry around the other side when she dares to glance up at him in return. Reborn, Mammon, and Dino all watch the exchange in faint amusement, wondering what exactly will happen. Mammon, in the meantime, says, "You tried to shove naming your latest onto Her, so I don't want to hear about it."  
  
On one hand, fair. On the other hand, "I  _did_  still name him."  
  
As usual, Dino steps in (forward, rather) with his hands held up to help calm down any bickering. "Alright, let's save that conversation for another time. We've been introduced to her, so it's only fair that we do the same otherwise." Glancing over his shoulder, he grins. "Right, Tsuna?" Instead of coming over to stand alongside his brother, Tsuna only stares at him, brow crinkled incredulously over those still big eyes. Sighing in melodramatically fond exasperation, Dino reaches over to help tug him into place. "No need to be shy. Chrome, I'm Dino. You'll hear the mortals call me 'Light and Labor' sometimes." Reaching up, he ruffles Tsuna's hair and earns a squawk. "And this is my little brother, Tsuna!"  
  
For a moment, it doesn't seem as though the new and young god will react. She stays quite firmly behind Mammon, silent and watching. Yet right on the precipice of things seeming awkward, she steps around her parent to trot forward. The pearls that trail behind her clink against one another, rustling the long grass. Neither of his sons seem to have expected to be approached like this, both their eyebrows raised in surprise.... which is nothing compared to what happens when, once close enough, Chrome leans in close and plants a kiss to Tsuna's cheek. "Hello."  
  
Dino bursts out laughing, a sound that seems pretty delayed compared to how fast Tsuna's face lights up scarlet. The younger brother can't make eye contact, jerking his gaze downwards, only to immediately realize  _that_  mistake. Chrome isn't wearing much more than pearl and net still. Against all odds, Tsuna's face burns an even deeper red, and his gaze jolts upwards again. Any better? Definitely not. Faced with no right options, he can only cover his face with the most strangled of noises. Reborn doesn't laugh himself, but he  _does_  smirk.  
  
It occurs to him, watching the way Chrome's own shoulders jerk from shock, that she's not doing anything particularly out of the ordinary from her view. Why would she? Desire's children would need more than a paltry kiss to think of as particularly shocking. No doubt Tsuna's height is what made him the first target. To prove a point, Reborn pushes himself away from the tree and leans forward slightly. Well, considerably- she really is Mammon's child from hair to height. "Reborn," he says by way of introduction, although he wouldn't be surprised if Mammon had already told her about the Arcobaleno and all their names. Sure enough, with only one last befuddled glance over to Tsuna, she trots over and leans up on the tips of her toes. One kiss to one of Reborn's cheeks, and he gives her a fleeting one as well in greeting. It's a gesture he's already seen in a couple of different places, and passed on further.  
  
There's no such greeting given to Dino, although that might be because he's still busy laughing as he rests his arm on top of his little brother's head. "What's got you so worked up?" he asks playfully while Chrome trots back over to hide behind Mammon. "I didn't think you'd react that way."  
  
Tsuna's words are muffled. "It's different!" A pause, and one finger slides away a little so that he can peer between them. "She's..." His voice drops low. "She doesn't... have clothes..."  
  
Pitiless, Reborn snorts. "You've seen naked people before," he points out dryly. "It's almost a part of your domain." One could say that there's a certain element of weakness to the concept of being nude, after all. A state of being that is only entered when one has no choice, or is in such a place as to have no fear of being harmed. When he thinks of being in Loyalty's oceans, coral and salt water on bare skin, Reborn feels he understands it rather well.  
  
"It's  _different_ ," Tsuna whines, finger sliding to hide his eye again and his skin still red.  _Ah_. Reborn glances back over to Chrome, who only blinks innocently, and Mammon, who is more pointedly smirking in self-satisfaction. He's starting to understand what's going on here. Mammon didn't even have to do anything, no need to exert such effort in the first place. Before he can point out anything, however, Tsuna steps forward himself. One hand is still pressed against his eyes, keeping him effectively blind, but the other fumbles outstretched in Chrome's direction. There's a pause amongst all of them, Chrome included, before she steps forward and delicately presses the tips of her fingers onto his open and waiting palm. Burned skin folds around her fingers gently, as gently as Tsuna ever treats most other things he runs into, and then he begins to guide her off....  
  
...But not before nearly tripping over his own feet first, and then a rock second.  
  
Off in the distance, there's the long curling trail of smoke which signifies a residence. Much like Loyalty and Desire are closely connected, so too are Tsuna's and Dino's own realms. The boy won't have to go far before he's back in his own home that he's made for himself, or perhaps that the universe has shifted to make for him. That means it won't be very hard to go find him when Reborn himself is done talking with Mammon.  
  
Because oh, he certainly wants to talk.  
  
"You really did take some effort to have her look like you," he comments, watching as the last trace of fluttering purple hair and a bird nest mess disappear from view. "I'm surprised there were no marks on her face."  
  
A split second passes, where he can tell that Mammon is deciding if they're being genuinely complimented at or subtly needled. When it comes to them, even something genuine could be labeled as the other. Apparently today is a good day, or they're coasting on the satisfaction of their daughter's existence. Mammon goes with the latter, holding themselves up proudly. "Isn't it only fitting? Even  _you_  end up reflected in what comes from you. This is what happens when you actually make a child on purpose."  
  
"I'm standing right here," Dino remarks dryly. "Could you please imply that I'm an accident while my back is turned, at the very least?"  
  
Mammon ignores him, because Mammon is what mortals would call  _a little shit_. Reborn also ignores him, if only because he's more focused on the conversation than anything. Besides, it's true. Both of his sons have been accidents, events that he hadn't foreseen and hadn't put much thought into. It doesn't mean they're mistakes. "So are you making the rounds to discover her purpose, then?" he asks instead. Mammon promptly snorts.  
  
"Please. We know what domain she is born for. I told you, didn't I? She was made with  _purpose_." That said, Mammon turns on their heel and goes to trot off where both their children have wandered off too. Someone's a fussy parent. Despite that thought, Reborn pushes himself away from the tree as well and follows after with Dino trailing behind. While he would never give Mammon the satisfaction of knowing it, he's also intrigued in the creation of a new god. This is the fourth now, and each one has been intriguing in their own way. Gods are still such new creatures... and this is Desire's first. Something that isn't born of Chaos for once.  
  
There's a lot to learn here.  
  
Telling Tsuna's realm from Dino's is a simple matter, although the change is slow and subtle. The same sky seems to stretch over both, so blue as to make one's chest ache and with only the occasional passing cloud. Tall grass and shimmering wheat begin to grow shorter. At first, the plants of Tsuna's home only peek out from inbetween the much taller fields. It's not something that lasts long. Soon, they appear in clusters, and then batches, and then it is through fields and fields of softly burning orange flowers that their legs pass through. The "burning" descriptor is by no means any sort of exaggeration. From the petals, soft flames flicker. When night eventually comes, mirrored in this realm as the mortal earth, they'll serve as excellent guideposts to Tsuna's home. For now, they're simply a soft and pleasant warmth. No burns mar the skin of visitors, or catch their clothes aflame. Past all of it, small and cozy, is a house much like the ones of a certain little village from not that long ago.  
  
Chrome is seated in front of it, a blanket draped over her shoulders and a wooden bowl cradled in her palms. A quiet pleasure emanates from her, serene and content while she looks up at the sky. She only drags her gaze away when Mammon is close enough. "It's nice," she says, unprompted, as Mammon settles down besides her. "It's warmer than anywhere else."  
  
Reborn knows she isn't wrong. There are plenty of places that are  _hotter_  than Tsuna's home, sand enough to scorch, the sun bright enough to cook whatever is left out to its touch. Deserts, and plains, and thick swamps that trap the heat within. Yet there is nowhere  _warmer_  than Tsuna's home. Nowhere that welcomes the tired and the lost as well as this place does so, with its cozy house and burning flowers. "I see he's made you at home," Dino says, standing besides Reborn and smiling a little. "Is he still fussing about your clothing? Or, well, lack thereof?"  
  
Before she can answer, Tsuna pops out as if summoned and stands there in the doorway with his brow still drawn tight. The color of his face has cooled down a little, now more a soft pink than a shade of red that could cook an egg. He still looks as flustered as ever, holding out some clothing that's in his arms to Chrome, and he almost seems  _pleading_  despite saying nothing. Chrome seems oblivious to his dilemma, or she's doing quite an impressive job of ignoring it, and focuses on what he's offering. After a moment of purely visual inspection, she shakes her head softly. Another small and despairing noise comes from the very back of Tsuna's throat and, yes, there he goes again back into the building. Still calm, Chrome takes a sip of her soup from the bowl. It only occurs to her to offer any sort of answer after that, and she tilts her head to the side. "He says... I'll get cold. Or burn myself."  
  
Reborn's mouth twitches upwards slightly. "I think Nana left more of an impression on him than I did," he says aside to Dino, not upset at all with the observation. Even with what Lal and Colonello said, there are still a lot of unpleasant things within him. They shouldn't be passed onto someone else.  _He_ is more than enough. Nana was a good woman, anyway. There are a lot worse people that Tsuna could have become fond of, and taken inspiration from.  
  
A soft laugh leaves Dino as well. "I'm sure she'd be glad to hear that."  
  
All of this must be going over Mammon and Chrome's head, and the former makes sure to lean closer to their daughter. "Ignore the nonsense they spew. It's a regular occurrence."  
  
Chrome ducks her head a little. "It's nice to hear things," she says. Well, that's no surprise to hear. It matches everything else about her. Once again, Tsuna ducks out from his home and holds out the most simple of garments: deep green in color, long sleeves, doesn't go far past the legs. Ignoring the rest of them once more, Chrome inspects this one a little longer than the first, and it's almost expected when she gets up to her feet. The net of pearls still clink together as she comes closer, ducking inside with the clothing in tow, and Tsuna heaves out a sigh of relief.   
  
"That bothered?" Dino asks, half sympathetic, half amused.   
  
Tsuna's look is exasperated and more than a little strained. "She'll get  _cold_ ," he whines, exactly as Chrome said. "That's why mortals wear things!"   
  
Mortals do a lot of things for numerous reasons. Vanity is prevalent in a lot of animals, although none do it quite so finely as mortals or creatures larger than any of them. Some are just picky. Reborn doesn't point all of this out to his youngest. Helping him find his purpose had been enough handholding for his life, or at least a good few centuries. He'll learn when he learns, one way or the other. To the side, Mammon steals Chrome's abandoned bowl and finishes it off purely because they can.   
  
When Chrome comes out, fitting the outfit easily and with her pearls gathered up in her arms, not all traces of pink leave from Tsuna's face. Some continue to linger, dusted across his cheeks and overall warming his skin. This time, at least, he's less hesitant to offer his hand to her once again and he meets her eyes unhindered. "Come on," he says encouragingly, a little floundering. "I know how it feels to not know what to do, so, we can look together, right?"  
  
She doesn't correct him. Instead, she silently takes his hand and rubs her thumb across charred skin. The smile that blossoms across her face is tiny, pure in its little trace of happiness. "Okay," she says, agreeing without any fight. When Tsuna takes her away this time, it's in a crackle of embers popping and the faint smell of burning wood; they're gone.   
  
"I thought you'd object a little more," Dino says, voicing Reborn's own thoughts much more politely to Mammon. "You seemed rather possessive of her." Certainly, they've been hoarding their little daughter's existence deep within the seas and core of the world.   
  
Mammon licks their lips clean of any food, eyes flashing gold as they look up at father and son. "It'll be a good lesson for her," they say simply. "Besides, who am I to get in the way of myself?"   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Tsuna is kindness.   
  
There are a few other things he is, of course. He is clumsy, and easily startled, and not at all particularly subtle when he glances at her from beneath his bangs. Still, above all else, below all else, he is kind, and Chrome likes the warmth of his fire-ruined hands when he holds onto hers. "Mammon helped start the bet that made me," he tells her as they sink their feet into the muddied waters of a swamp, 'searching' for her purpose. Reptiles that could take down a human lurk within the waters, drowsy under the heat of the sun peering inbetween the foliage, and pay them no mind. They slosh through unimpeded. "But I don't really know much more about them than that."   
  
Chrome hums, watching as a crane watches them with its long talons curled around fragile branches. "All Mammon told me about Reborn is that he's more dumb than people think, and that he almost ended the world."  
  
Tsuna makes a face at that, tongue sticking out barely between his teeth. "He'd throw me in the deep end of a lake if I told him he was stupid to his face." Alarm suddenly strikes him, and he tugs on her hand a little. "Don't do it either!"   
  
"I won't." There's no reason for her to, anyway. Mammon's opinions aren't necessarily her own, and Reborn had been perfectly civil to her. "Mammon likes dark places, and secrets, and having all sorts of things," she tells him instead, giving him information that he hadn't before.   
  
In turn, Tsuna tells her, "Reborn's sense of humor is horrible, and he can shoot anything in the world but likes flicking things at Dino to keep him on his toes." Together, they smile at each other, sharing little things about their origins up until chatter different than nature's sounds can be heard up ahead. Best he can, helps her onto the wood which has been carefully strewn about, and she balances herself on vines that have been used to connect things together. Oblivious to a pair of child gods making their way upwards, the humans continue to work. Their home is so carefully constructed, she marvels, held aloft from treacherous waters which hold all manner of creatures and can rise far too high when the rains come. "They're really clever," Tsuna promises her, although it doesn't need to be said, and guides her through the little settlement.   
  
Gods are bound to humans. Tsuna tell her this as they go through the various buildings and paths that have been carved out by mortal hands. Any god that comes into being serves a purpose, and it is from humans that purpose comes from. "I don't mind," Tsuna says when they rest for a while, watching a pair of mortals inspect fruits from the local plantlife. "Reborn wouldn't like it, but he's an Arcobaleno, so he doesn't have to deal with it at all. But I don't mind. I used to because, uh, there were a lot of people wanting help, all the time, and it was a little overwhelming." His tongue flicks out, wetting dry lips and giving an outlet for his nervousness. "But it's hard to be alone this way, too."  
  
Not being alone.... Drawing one leg up, Chrome wraps her arms around it and rests her chin on her knee. Never being alone.... It sounds so different from what she's been used to, down in the dark with only one other person for company. Is that what she wants? So new to her, she can't decide. Leaving it in the back of her mind for now, Chrome glances over at Tsuna. "So what kind of humans are you bound to?" she asks. Mammon had never told her that. Chrome had never asked, either, so she can't call it a failing on her parent's fault. Besides.... Even if she had asked, she's certain that she would have been told to learn it for herself.   
  
"Oh, uh...." For a moment, he seems uncomfortable. His hands fiddle with each, fingers wrapping around finger, and his toes curl uncertainly. "It's sort of... vague? Dino's is easier. Any human that works or is doing something tries to talk to him. I've heard there's another god that controls the woods and other places like that? So they're-" Pulling his hand away from the other, Tsuna tries to gesture only to let it flop down in the end. "...Simpler." That's not really an answer, and they both know it. Fidgeting for a while longer, he offers his hand to her once again. "Hold on, I'll just show you? I think there's...." He drifts off for a moment, eyes brighter, gaze further away, before he snaps back to where they are in that moment. "Yeah, there's something I think that matches."   
  
When she puts her hand in his, they're somewhere else again. No longer is the air heavy with water and heat. Instead, it's dryer, cooler, and shrubs have cracked out a home in harder earth. It's not quite a desert.... but not quite the plains, either. It is somewhere inbetween, and there are a pair of figures laying on the ground nearby.   
  
One is dead.   
  
The other isn't.   
  
The one who is dead has gore marks through his torso, blood pooling out thick and heavy from the holes to gather thickly on the ground. However, that isn't what has killed him. His death is in the way he is sprawled against the earth, head tilted at an odd angle with a neck that shouldn't be bending as it is. Freshly dead- they arrive even as his hair is still fluttering to a stop against his bloodied skull. Besides him, behind him, the one who is alive is scrambling up onto her feet. A knife is in her hand, too big for her grasp, and wildness shines in her eyes as she watches the deer which is shaking its head still. A warning. It's taken out one of them, and it will take her out, too.   
  
Except it won't.   
  
Tsuna's sudden quiet presence behind the woman says it won't. No joy lies in his expression as fire alights from the center of his forehead, and curls to life around his fingertips. Such somberness doesn't match how bright his hands are as he reaches to touch her- first at her knuckles, then at her spine, and finally leaving a dusting of embers through her hair. Her skin is still pale and her cheeks still red with adrenaline. Now, however, her eyes are sharper. Focused, ready. The deer charges, desperate and not ready to die- and neither is she. She dives forward, antlers whistling past her spine, and her knife slashes out in her roll past. Deer are not sturdy creatures when it comes to their legs. Sticks could hold them upright better. All it takes is one deep slash, and it crumples to the ground with a screech that rattles down to Chrome's ribs. Panting, flushed with exertion, the woman leaps forward and digs her knife in deeper.   
  
The deer thrashes... up until it doesn't. Up until it goes completely still.   
  
Already the embers are fading out from the woman's hair, and she nearly collapses across the creature's corpse. Breath rattles through her lungs, shakes her bones. Tsuna doesn't leave her side. He keeps his shoulder alight on her back, waiting. What he's waiting for soon becomes apparent. Once adrenaline has shattered its course through her, the woman drags herself over the deer's corpse and crawls over to the fallen body of her own companion. In the heat of the moment, there'd only been the threat to focus on. Now, with two gods watching in silence... The woman kneels besides the corpse of someone she once knew, and weeps.   
  
"When they don't have anyone else to help them," Tsuna says quietly, his voice somehow penetrating past grief-torn sobs, "then that's my domain." From his forehead, the flames begin to subside. She'd never noticed it before, but now Chrome realizes that there's a small scar right there in his skin. When the fire is completely extinguished, his bangs fall into place, and the scar is hidden once more. Instead of someone whose eyes had glowed brighter than anything and who'd cradled fire in his bare hands, there's only a boy standing there now. He's only a boy with sad eyes and near black hands resting on the shoulder of a grieving woman. "I try to be there when I can, but there's so many people... and I can't help them when they're at their weakest." Stepping into place besides the mortal, Tsuna slowly presses his knees into the earth as well. While one hand stays touching her, a glow emanating beneath the cracks of skin, his other hand begins to reach out to the corpse before it pauses. Uncertainly, his fingers curl into his palm. "I can't help them when they reach the end of their lives... whenever that is. I don't even know what happens to them afterwards. I wish I did."   
  
With her pearls still wrapped around her shoulders over her new garment, Chrome only has to fold the dress beneath her knees as she too kneels besides the corpse. Unlike Tsuna, however, she is on the other side, away from him, away from the woman. Where his hand is resting tentatively in midair, her own reaches over to rest along his knuckles. Surprised, his eyes rise up to meet hers. "I do," she tells him. "I can." There are questions on the tip of his tongue; Chrome doesn't give him a chance to voice them. Instead, she redirects her attention to the body waiting inbetween them.   
  
He's still warm, lingering with leftover life and the weight of the sun. Yet all of him is slack, completely unlike a person whose heart still beats. There is no tension in his limbs, no breath in his chest, none of the various minute movements which give away a life resting inside its home of flesh. Only one thing is left within the body, and it is that which calls to her. Taking her hand away from Tsuna, she rests her fingertips along loosely gaping lips. It calls to her, the thing that made this person unique, and she in turn calls to it by virtue of her existence. Drawn upwards, all it takes in the end is for her fingers to slip inside his mouth. Liquid greets her fingertips, an uneasy shade of green which clings to her skin as she pulls out from it with a pearl pinched in her grip. The green sheen to it begins to melt off once it is in the air, away from its body. When it is completely clear, all white, she adds it to the netting she carries.   
  
All the while, she doesn't look up into Tsuna's eyes. She doesn't dare attempt to read the silence which hangs between them. Instead, she rises up to her feet, and goes to tend to the other which calls to her. So many things call to her, honestly, but it is the deer that is closest to her focus right now. She does very much the same to it as she did to the mortal man, and draws shimmering shining thread from its mouth. For much longer than she needs to, Chrome fusses over adding it to the rest of the net.   
  
It hasn't escaped her notice how humans view death. Oh, she knows the best out of them all. She's seen their grief, like the woman's grief behind her, and what a painful deep thing it is. It is the reason for her existence; Mammon has told her this already. Death is the one place where humans cannot go, where they will never have a chance to go and then return as they can with anywhere else on their mortal earth. And to that they cannot know, do not know... They fear it.   
  
They feared it so much that they desired stronger than anything for something to be there, waiting for them.   
  
Yet she is a creature born of fear, born in the depths, born from the twisting monster Desire  _can_  be many a time. Mortals still fear death, and no doubt will fear her-   
  
The rough crinkled texture of Tsuna's hand on Chrome's shoulder startles her and, unable to stop herself, she looks up into his face. No fear rests in those wide brown eyes, or weighs down that soft mouth. No- the look on Tsuna's face  _shines_. Nowhere else has she ever seen a look like his, and her heart beats painfully hard within her chest. No other time has she ever felt so strongly as her parent, filled with the sudden vicious longing to always have that look directed towards her. "That's why I thought you felt familiar," he whispers, awed, relieved. "We're the same. I mean-" Flustered, his hand begins to slip from her shoulder, and Chrome has to react quickly to lay hers against it so that he doesn't leave her. He jolts, looking back up to her eyes again, and who knows what he sees there in her face. All Chrome knows is that his cheeks grow rosier at it, and he keeps talking. "I know we're not the same, like, the way me and Dino are similar, because we're both Reborn's sons, but, I could tell looking at you! I just didn't realize what it was! But we're..." His fingers knead anxiously against her skin, fidgety, and he ducks his head down. "We're the same. We're both here for the mortals.... for the same purpose."   
  
Are they? Perhaps they are. It seems so easy to believe that when Tsuna says it with such gentle firm conviction, and Chrome has to duck her own head as well when she feels a warmth spread along her own cheeks. If there's something she's  _supposed_  to say, she's not sure she can figure out what it is. All she can think of is a soft, "Good." From beneath her bangs, she peers up, and smiles slightly at the flustered expression which has taken over Tsuna's face again.   
  
If only the setting were nicer, like at the sea that Chrome can recall from her very first memories, instead of over the corpse of a deer with a crying woman behind them.   
  
That's probably what, in the end, has Tsuna help her to her feet. "Have the mortals been told about you?" he asks, the world around them begin blurry with that amber light which says they're inbetween places.   
  
"Some have." Chrome shrugs. "Fishing villages, and things like that, which live near the oceans and seas. Then Mammon got impatient, and wanted to show me off to you and your family." She says it without judgment, not minding very much. That's just how their parent is, prideful of the things that they have and wanting recognition for it as much as they want their own secrets no one else can be privy to. Some of that is in Chrome too, surely, passed down in the same way as the color of her hair and the comfort the darkest places have for her.   
  
She knows what will come out of Tsuna's mouth before he says it. "Then, let's hurry, and tell them!" His hands tug along hers, and she doesn't stop him. "They'll be happy to see you, I'm sure of it."   
  
Will they? Chrome isn't sure. At least, she's not sure until she actually listens to Tsuna go to the mortals and speak of her. When Mammon had told the mortals of her, it had been in their own way. They had spoken of her net of pearls which carried everyone who lived and who would live, and of her long reach which would find them no matter how far they went off into the ocean or got lost in the depths of the waves. Tsuna is so very different. He mentions the pearls, of course, how she fetches their souls and takes care to always keep them with her, but.... There are other things.   
  
Like her soft hands, caringly picking them up when their bodies have given out underneath the weight of their lives. Or her eyes, deep and beautiful, looking out for them from the day they being their lives to the end of them. He talks about her smile, soft and radiant, beautiful as the sunset shimmering over water.   
  
Chrome has to leave the village for that one. Considering the way Tsuna was fidgeting and blushing the entire description, she thinks he's a little thankful.   
  
....But she comes back. But he finds her. And they keep going, from village to settlement to camp, to anywhere where mortals have settled down and mind those they share their lives with. At first, it's in the same flickering way as usual, appearing and disappearing as fast as only gods can go. Yet soon, they begin to slow down.   
  
It's the little things, at first. Tsuna points out the horses off in the distance of a village, well cared for and allowed their freedom, so they go to visit the creatures dedicated to his elder brother. A visit deep into the jungles has him shyly show off his own animal avatars on earth. Some are only tiny little things, able to curl up in her arms with no trouble and lick with raspy tongues at her chin. Others are larger, stronger, and she's quiet as she watches the enormous cat deep within the jungle trees slip trough the jungles after watching them in turn. When she soon gets too overwhelmed by the constant presence of mortals, Tsuna is more than happy to walk with her and her alone to the next place, and their feet go across dirt- no tricks.   
  
That's probably what starts it. From then on, they walk with one another, and take in the world which is still so new to both of them. She, especially, has to look at everything with new eyes. Tsuna is no stranger to long journeys; it's a fact he tells her one night when the stars shine in a colorful sky. He tells her of his own confusion when he was young, of the places his father and brother would take him, the things they would do. Chrome listens attentively to every tale. It doesn't escape her that they are creating their own tory, similar yet different, with every step they take. When they stop at the latest gathering of humans, no matter how large or small it is, they both find plenty of work to tend to with their focus where it is. It would be a lie to say that there isn't a kind of comfort in routine.   
  
The day they first met seems as though it only just happened, a meeting of yesterday, but she knows that it's been many months when they take off through snow instead of flowers. Around them, the trees tower high and their sturdy branches carry loads of snow that has yet to touch the ground. A reverent silence fills the air, and she marvels when they come across tracks in the fresh snow.  
  
It is here that they find the wolf.  
  
Both of them feel it, although they sense different things. In Tsuna's eyes, an aching sadness shines once more, and she can feel the tug in her own heart towards something that is starting to wait for her. Such things aren't uncommon. With their domains being what they are, something is always calling for the embers of Tsuna's kindness, or the comforting foam of Chrome's realm. That means parts of them are always elsewhere, scattered across the world. It's only her focus which is there with Tsuna and which can feel the cold beneath her bare feet. If not for how there path takes them through the forest, perhaps they would never have truly come across the weakened creatures which lie in the forest.  
  
In the pristine white snow, the wolf's dirty pelt stands out. Once upon a time, perhaps it had been a lighter color. Chrome thinks she can see parts of its true hue past dirt and sweat and worse things. Yet he has had a rough life the last few days. Now, he is filthy. Worse, he is starving. Even with how curled up he is in the snow, the hollow of his stomach is painfully apparent. He's weak. He must be. That does not stop him from baring his teeth at the gods, his muzzle curling up and disrupting the thick frozen blood which has gathered on a relatively recent wound. All creatures know what the gods are. Their eyes see different things than that of humans.  
  
Still. His teeth are bared.  
  
That must be what has Tsuna's attention captured, his hands raised placatingly, but Chrome's eyes are elsewhere. It isn't for no reason that the wolf is where he is. In the white of the snow, a raven's pitch black feathers stand out more than the wolf's pelt. He's not dead.... not yet. Breath still raises his chest, and his eyes still flick deliriously about. Even from a distance, Chrome can tell that much. The true sadness is how slow his death is coming to him. Whatever injury that has grounded him and is responsible for the slightest flecks of blood which are scattered about the snow, it isn't enough. It hasn't taken him away from his suffering and misery, into her arms. Her heart aches for him, just as much as it aches for the wolf that will soon join the raven if it stays for any longer. "Why doesn't he leave?" she asks Tsuna quietly, not understanding why a wolf would lay with his prey.  
  
"He won't abandon kin," says a voice that is most certainly not Tsuna's. Blinking, Chrome looks up and finds a boy whose appearance seems to be a little older than hers or Tsuna's, and yet not as old as Dino is. His eyes are dulled steel as he looks over the pair of them, and his black hair lies plainly on his head. A patch of bright red cloth is attached to a part of his cloak.  
  
"Family?" Tsuna echoes, surprised, and almost flinches back at how sharply that stare goes to him.  
  
Yet nothing happens besides that, or at least not immediately. "Ravens and wolves know each other well," he says coolly, slowly glancing down onto the pair of creatures that are between three gods, now. "Ravens are clever, and see farther than anything stuck to land. Yet they can't do anything on their own... They can't take a deer or other creatures down. It's not uncommon." When he strides closer, the wolf only gives him a passing glance. There's no warning or threat, as to Tsuna and Chrome. All he does is stare brazenly at the god that looms over him. "What is rarer.... is to see a wolf that would abandon his pack for a raven."  
  
If he understands the conversation which is going on over his head, the wolf makes no show of it. All he does is curl ever tighter around the raven's weak body.  
  
"He's going to die," Chrome points out, quietly. For the first time, the other god's eyes go to her.  
  
"It's what he's chosen to do." His hair sways in line with the tilt of his head. "So he'll die."  
  
Awkwardly, Tsuna shifts as if to step forward but ultimately doesn't. "Uh... You're Kyoya, aren't you? Kyoya Hibari? My brother mentioned you. You're a god of the wilds."  
  
Suddenly, all dullness leaves Hibari's eyes, and they sharpen in interest right towards Tsuna. "So you're connected to that annoying person..." Even at the same time that Tsuna is raising his hands up to try and calm him, Hibari's own also rise up... with his fingers curled around two weapons already. "I want to see how you do, then."  
  
"W-Wait-!!" But there's no waiting. Hibari launches himself forward, already swinging, and Tsuna immediately turns tail to run. Chrome finds herself left in the snow flurries the two leave behind, blinking in bewilderment as her hair becomes dusted with white. Rather belatedly, she turns around to stare in the direction the pair have already disappeared to. Despite the surely impressive distance, what's even more impressive is that she can still hear Tsuna yelling.  
  
Ah. Well. It's not her problem, she supposes.  
  
The wolf and the raven are also technically not her problem. She is free to continue on, where she will surely meet Tsuna at the next village or town or group of travelers. At the same time.... Chrome stays in place. Her eyes drift back to the pair: the raven's fluttering weak chest, the wolf's curled lip, their blood mingled together in the snow. Kyoya's words echo in her head.  _It's what he's chosen to do, so he'll die._  Never has she wondered if death has been right or wrong, no matter the circumstances. It happens, whether anyone likes it or not. Even now, she knows there is nothing wrong with it. So why does something different from the usual tug pull in her chest as she keeps her eyes on the pair that will go into death together?  
  
Quietly, with all the crunching of snow to give away her movement, Chrome moves forward and the wolf lets loose a low rumbling growl. From the back of his neck down to his spine, hair rises and bristles- a warning sign. A last chance. Chrome doesn't ignore it, only she doesn't do as it demands either. Instead, she steps closer and closer against the wolf's protest. Ever tighter, he winds around the raven's fragile body, or as best as he can without crushing his companion's delicate bones. A bird, after all, doesn't have the sturdiness of land creatures. The force of his growls turns into snarls, and the same force reopens the wound across his muzzle. Blood, thick and slow, begins to crawl down through his fur and cover his bared teeth where it pools in his lip. Does it hurt? He doesn't act as though it does. His love, his desire, ignores all pain. That, almost more than anything, is what has her reach down towards them.  
  
Teeth dig deep into her arm.  
  
In all her memories... Chrome can't remember being hurt before. Such things couldn't reach the depths that she was born in, and her parent had been so proud in keeping her safe away from harm. As the wolf's teeth piece her skin, dig into muscle, Chrome realizes how fortunate she's been in that regard. Even Tsuna has felt pain, his hands burned and charred as they are. The others too. Even if this is all a simple wolf can do.... It is enough for her to not want to deal with it again, if she could. She flinches, fingers jerking and spasming. A part of her hand is trapped within the wolf's maw, stopping her ability to move them right. His snarls rattle up through her bones, echo through her veins, and her blood joins his from where it has gathered in his mouth.... And, bound together, both drip down to splatter onto the snow.  
  
Even if it hurts, however.... "You won't be able to kill me," she tells him, voice quivering and soft. Tugging against his teeth would do nothing, so she stays still. "You won't even be able to wound. It will heal the second you remove your mouth. I'm not going to hurt you, or him."  
  
There's no arguing with a wolf, however. At least, there's no arguing with  _this_  wolf, who snarls into her skin regardless of her words. When she takes yet another tentative step closer, trying to reach around him, he shakes his head violently and she goes stumbling. Her blood, his blood, it goes scattering through the air and stains icy wood and bright snow. Soon enough, however, he gives up, panting hotly against her arm. Who knows how long he's starved, only that it's been long enough that he doesn't have the energy for such shows of aggression. Once more, she steps closer, and, once more, he tries to shake. When she's close enough, however, he stops. Anything else.... could risk harming the raven whose feathers her fingertips are just a breath away from. If his teeth are not enough, then he is helpless to watch as she scoops the raven up to her chest where she cradles him.  
  
But even if it's not enough... His teeth stay anchored to her flesh, his paws stumbling through the snow as she begins to walk away. It is awkward to carry on this way, her feet tripping over hers and his alike, and yet she is still able to carry on despite his weight. So she does. She walks through the snow, through the trees, on and on and on. It's not long after she breaks through the forest line that the wolf's fangs begin to slip from her flesh.... and then from her arm completely. As she said... Blood drips back up her wrist, and flesh stitches itself together without prompting. In no time at all, it is as she was never touched at all.  
  
Even without his grip on her, the wolf follows. Through fields, through woods, through long plains with nothing much on them, the wolf follows after her. Chrome is a god, and the world is hers to waltz through as she pleases, especially with her domain as large as it is. She could vanish in the blink of an eye, away from the wolf's eyes and his nose. She doesn't. All she does is cradle the raven to her chest, sharing the sound of her heartbeat with it, and glances back. Every time she does so, there is the wolf. He is weak. Starving. Blood stays gathered on his face, occasionally cracking or tearing to drip more sticky trails down the side of his mouth.  
  
Their journey isn't a simple one. Rather, it's not so easy for  _him_. Her own is fairly straightforward, only she's not the one who has to worry about scavengers circling through the air, or predators snarling at the creature which is invading their territory. Occasionally, she stops to watch him, wondering if she should intervene. It never becomes necessary. The scavengers stay distant, fine with waiting for some time, and the predators... Sometimes they attack the wolf, leaving him with more scars. Most of the time, however, they're fine with only watching to make sure he gets no ideas. Perhaps they can smell death on him. When he gets close enough once again, his eyes on hers, Chrome restarts her journey.  
  
Eventually, the cold smell of winter leaves them, and something heavier claims the air. Sea salt is only a distant thing, at first. Chrome uses it to guide herself- or maybe more to allow the wolf some assistance. From the ocean's darkest depths, she emerged. It is child's play to return. If the wolf understands her gesture, she hasn't the faintest idea. As she glances back to him in this final stretch, he is in even worse condition. How long they've been walking, how many days and night have passed, she has to admit she hasn't been paying attention to such details. It all blurs together to her. In contrast, the wolf carries the marks of their journey. His injuries are scattered across his body, infection having found fine breeding grounds. Saliva drips thickly from his jaws, uncontrollable. When she looks at those eyes which have been watching her for so long, now she finds them glazed over, unseeing. How he can even still follow her when he nearly collapses with ever step, when he can't see her, when his nose must be filled with the scent of his own blood...  
  
Chrome knows. She carries the reason within her arms, and feels the raven's breath as only the faintest wisps.  
  
When they arrive past trees and grass, over sand dunes, the ocean is spread out wide before them. The horizon where night sky and ocean meet is nearly indistinguishable from one another. Where the full moon which hangs above is reflected down below. Now, at this time, the ocean is a mirror. All is the same within it. Boundaries blur. The void reaches past earth's lines, from within it, and it touches itself. Even when Chrome steps into the waves that softly lap against the shore, her presence barely disturbs the reflection that has been set up. Icy water curls around her ankles, then up to her knees, claiming more skin and flesh with every step she takes. She looks back, waiting for the wolf follow her. He pauses at the water's edge, swaying, running on not even the very last scraps of his energy but rather his own intense will. Perhaps not even his will.... but his own desire. With a lurch, he steps forward, splashing clumsily into the water after her.  
  
She's already waist-deep by that point, and that's as deep as she needs to go. Here, the Void's presence is everywhere instead of that place far beneath the waves. When she lets her arms lower into the water, the raven's dark feathers match so perfectly with it all. It's a surprise, almost, that his plumage doesn't shine with the stars too. Instead, under her quiet gaze... he begins to become nothing more than that. Nothing more than his feathers, beak and eyes and legs disappearing into the dark waves. Behind her, the wolf keens. She'd though his voice had long gone out, but no- it's there. The sound carries up high into the air, fills it completely with his grief and anguish. His splashing becomes more intense with ever step, head raised back as he tries to fight his way through the salty waves. Deep in a winter forest, has he ever even swam before? It doesn't matter. Crying, gasping, dying, the wolf presses forward.  
  
In the water, now eerily still, the feathers have lost all semblance of sticking to a solid form. Instead, they are spread out now all along the water's surface in a connected pool of their own- as if someone had strung them all together in a blanket. The wolf's head falls, hitting the water, and he's strange, now, too. His body ripples strangely as he makes his way through the water, only the top of his head and back showing now. When he reaches the feathers, all spread out as they are, his head rises up- and then keeps rising up, a cloak, hollow, draped over the body of a boy with soft skin and a blunt nose. Stepping back to the shoreline, Chrome keeps her eyes right on him.  
  
Despite the lips and teeth which could form words now, if he cared to, the boy doesn't stop to speak them. The same kind of despairing keen is warbling out from his throat as he shoves his new hands into the water, past void-black feathers. He digs, splashes, searches through everything until he's elbow deep and  _pulling_. What little she can see of his muscles flex with the effort of it, fueled by desperation, and the boy that was once a wolf never stops. He stumbles, and slips, the sand beneath his feet not kind to such actions, and he does not stop. Not until he's suddenly stumbling back, the body of another in his grasp. A ragged gasp of exertion tumbles from his mouth, but he holds strong. With a sort of adoration, he bears the body of the boy with the raven-black hair and raven-feather cloak determinedly. When his partner takes his first breath, long and wet and shuddering, the wolf boy hisses, teeth bared. Nothing has hurt him. Not physically.  
  
No words disturb the quiet sea air. There's only the sounds of their breathing as both boys steady themselves in the water. Droplets cling to the raven boy's eyelashes as he raises them, staring down at his partner. He is quietly lovely in his own way, towering a good few hands above the other and bird-bone-light in his lankiness. His dark hair is slick with the weight of the sea, clinging to neck and face alike, but he barely notices. All of his attention is on the other. Fingers that are just a little too long slowly trace up along the face of his companion, and his knuckles push back the furred hood that covers his face. The wolf boy isn't quite  _handsome_ , a fresh scar still healing from cheek to cheek and his short blond hair sticking out wildly from salt. Still, there is no denying there is something beautiful in his brown eyes that shine as he and the raven boy look at one another. They look at one another for a very, very long time.  
  
And then, eventually, slowly, they look to her.  
  
Chrome smiles.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A single knock at his door is all it takes to draw Tsuna's attention back to his home, and he's opening the entrance in a heartbeat. His skin is still flushed, sweat sticking to his temples from his running, and he stares in utter befuddlement at the trio that is now before him.   
  
"Why," he asks quietly, wheezing, "is everyone naked?"


	3. Lung, Heart, Eye

"So they're like Romario?" Tsuna asks her quietly, watching as Ken carefully digs through every little inch and cranny of his home. The blond had acquiesced to pants and little else, save for the cloak of fur that's draped over his shoulders. Chikusa isn't far off, properly clothed along with his own cloak of dark feathers, and he too watches his partner with those dark eyes of his. One would think that a raven would be more curious, but they're intelligent creatures, too. There's no need for him to move even an inch so long as Ken is within his sight, digging through containers and moving things off of shelves.   
  
Chrome considers his words carefully, leaning against Tsuna ever so slightly with her fingers wrapped around a small clay cup. "I suppose so," she says, only very faintly familiar with the horse. Those are the creatures of Dino's domain, apparently, and Romario the exemplar of them all. All she knows of him is what he looks like, with the rest told to her through Tsuna. "Did he find Romario and make him like he is, too?"  
  
Across the room, Ken takes a small pouch and brings it close to his nose. A couple of sniffs, and he recoils, making a face, and tosses it to the side. Tsuna sighs quietly. By the time the wolf is done investigating everything, his home will no doubt be a mess. Chrome isn't particularly apologetic about it. Isn't it only in an animal's nature to explore? "I don't know," Tsuna admits, not bothering to clean up while Ken is still searching about. "He might have done it all on his own, just from being with Dino. I didn't know we could do it on our own with animals."   
  
"They're not animals."   
  
Pausing, Tsuna blinks at her, befuddled. "Huh?"  
  
Chrome stares back at him. "They're not animals," she repeats carefully. "They're mine."   
  
"...Oh." Perhaps it doesn't make complete sense to him. Chrome feels that's probably true, considering the way his brows furrow together and his wide eyes blink at her. However, it's the plain and simple truth of it. Chikusa and Ken are hers, before anything else. They were hers even before her and Tsuna stepped into that forest and laid eyes upon them. Hibari, she thinks, would perhaps understand what she meant. Tsuna... doesn't have it so easily, although by no fault of his own.   
  
That's alright. So abruptly as to startle him, she gets up suddenly to her feet, and the water in her cup sloshes dangerously close to the edge. "Chikusa," she says quietly, and both raven and wolf look over to her. "Ken. Let's go." Immediately, Ken drops the cup that was in his hand, although fortunately it only has an inch or two to go. By the time the wolf lopes his way to her side, Chikusa is still getting up to his feet and stands with a faint sway. He doesn't like being tall, she thinks as he draws himself into a truly atrocious slouch like none other she's ever seen before. It makes sense, in more way than one. At his core, he's a bird. This is a little odd for him, although he walks better than Ken does, the latter always only a slight nudge from going on all fours again. With both of them by her side, she wraps her fingers around their arms and glances back over at Tsuna. "Ah.... Bye." And she vanishes, straight to her home.   
  
It's a lonely, dark place, her little realm. Carved into the side of a harsh cliff face of pure rock, it looks out to a sea that's far too calm, and its depths twine deep into earth. Chrome has never looked out to see where the rest of the land leads, if it leads anywhere at all. She's content as she is, looking out to the ocean and where her many nets are spread out against its surface. There, the various pearls rest in their connected strings, not even bobbing. How could they, with nothing to disturb the water? It's not homey, like Tsuna's is, but it's home.   
  
Used to landscapes just as barren in the cold of winter, neither Ken or Chikusa seem particularly bothered. In fact, the former detaches immediately from her side to crouch at the edge of the platform where the water dwells only a few inches below it. "Aaaah, there's so many!" Without any sense of propriety, he reaches down to flick the tips of his fingers through the water's surface. Ripples spread out, a sight that seems so strange on what was formerly so motionless, and Chrome watches the pearls ride the little waves. Even in the wake of such disturbance, they stay afloat. She could berate him for touching something so valuable, sure, but she doesn't. It's not harming anyone or anything.   
  
Instead, she turns her eyes upwards to watch Chikusa. Instead of looking outward onto the endless expanse of water or the mist which rests upon it far out enough, he's turned to look further back into where the cave closes in and goes ever further downward. It's a narrow passageway, and so dark that it almost doesn't seem real where its entrance starts. One wouldn't assume that a bird would have an interest in such things, but Chikusa continues to play with that which should otherwise define him. "Where does that go?"  
  
Chrome stares at it for a long quiet moment. "To dark places," she says at last, and doesn't explain further. Chikusa in turn asks no more questions. Then again, with Ken suddenly bounding back to join them, it's not as if he really gets a chance to.   
  
"A nest!" he barks, his fists curled up. "You dumb bird, this place doesn't have a tree for you to make a nest!"   
  
A certain sort of opaqueness glazes over Chikusa's eyes. It's the kind that comes about with exasperation, and having to answer a question that isn't worth even half of the energy it would take to answer it. Chikusa does anyway. "Only recent parents or young need nests, you dumb wolf... I'm not either of those."   
  
"Everyone needs a den!" Ken stomps his foot on the ground, teeth bared in his aggravation and practically bristling despite the fact that the only hair which can manage so well is the hair on his head. "Say I'm right, Chrome!"   
  
"Ah..." When she'd first taken both of them, Chrome isn't entirely sure what she was expecting, or if she was expecting anything at all. She'd touched both raven and wolf because something about them had touched her, first. There'd been no real planning involved at any step in the whole thing. Still, she wasn't expecting this, a pair looking at her in expectation to settle a silly argument. Honestly, it's not a position she'd ever expected to be in. Fingers curling around one another, she shifts awkwardly as she looks from wolf to raven. What is she supposed to say here? "Do... you want this to be more like a den?" It fits partially, at least, being a cave and mostly shielded from the elements, although no such thing really exists here near her realm.   
  
Chikusa blinks slowly, tilting his head with about as much speed to the side. "...He'll complain if there isn't much." After a little more consideration, he gives something of a one shouldered shrug. "And.... I guess it won't be particularly comfortable sitting around here..." Besides him, Ken about wiggles his whole body in lieu of a tail, and grins victoriously.   
  
Well, that solves that, then. Now there's only one more question that needs to be asked. "Then... Do you want to make one like ravens and wolves do... or like humans do?" Pointedly, she looks down at their bodies, mostly human save for the furs or feathers that they now wear as clothing instead of as bodily a part of them.   
  
That actually has both of them pause, blinking at the proposition. Immediately, without even needing to think about it, Ken turns to look at Chikusa. "Have  _you_  ever been in a human den?" he asks, more curious than accusing.   
  
"....I've always lived in the forest with you..." Chikusa raises an eyebrow. "I've only seen what they look like from the outside..."  
  
Maybe that was a useless question, then, with both of them still seeing the world with such new eyes. At least the solution is easy. "Then... You can both come with me." Her fingers rub at the strings inbetween the pearls she wears, practically a cloak of her own, although nothing like what a normal human wears, or what the pair before her do. "I still have to do so much..." She's still always doing so much. Humans are fragile, and many. That's not even going into the rest of life which exists in the world. Sometimes, she wonders how the other gods can do it, and if it's easier to be a god of humans such as Tsuna , or a god of the wilds as Hibari.  
  
Maybe that's her problem, in the end.   
  
Fussing about her problems is something that will have to wait for another day. Today is the day that Ken perks up, excited, and even Chikusa gains a little bit of interest in his dull eyes. "Let's go already!" Ken says, grabbing her arm and not needing to think twice about it. That latter part is for Chikusa to do, but even he says nothing in protest. All he does is stick close to Ken, following him and thus Chrome by extension as they return to the world of mortal lives.   
  
It's a world both of them should be more than familiar with. Chrome can understand herself, a young god newly born into the world, but surely Chikusa and Ken would be different. At least, that's what she assumes up until they step into the first human village and Ken zooms off immediately. No one sees him, when he's with her. Chrome realizes  _that_  fairly quickly, following after him helplessly to get him to stop from making off with something, or shoving over a small child, or any number of things a wolf might not realize he's not supposed to do. She's persuading him from shoving his nose up against a small baby held in his mother's grasp when she realizes that  _Chikusa_  is now out of her sight.   
  
Needless to say, it takes the better part of the afternoon wrangling both of them into proper behavior, although fortunately Chikusa is too lazy for most troublemaking.   
  
"Sorry," she says for lack of anything better to say, watching Ken pace impatient circles around Chikusa in the center of the little settlement. Every few seconds, he pauses as some other new thing catches his attention, and his stare is almost longing as he watches the person or animal or thing pass him by.   
  
Ken doesn't respond, only whines, and it's Chikusa who gives a long sigh. He's apparently resigned himself to being the metaphorical lease; his hand reaches out to snag the back of Ken's fur cloak whenever the blond starts to wander too far. "He's always like this," Chikusa mutters, fingers slipping out of warm fur. "This is why we've never been able to sneak into human groups before."   
  
A certain level of accusation is layered over his words, and Ken notices immediately. Even while Chrome is staring at them, Ken whirls around to glower at his partner. "Everyone else always said it was a bad idea!" he says loudly, fists curled at his sides. "Don't blame it on me!"   
  
"...I could've gone into these places before. I'm subtle."   
  
"I can be subtle!"   
  
"No you can't."   
  
"Yes I can!"   
  
"Um," Chrome says, interjecting more because it seems like something she  _should_  do than anything else. "It's alright to be curious... but do you remember why we're here?" Judging by the way Ken freezes up, looking aggravated and panicked all at once, she's certain he doesn't. Chikusa, if she had to guess, probably does, but there's no telling when she looks at his face and finds bird blankness instead. He did wander off and steal a bunch of beads for reasons she's not entirely sure she understands... Let alone if he understands it himself. Birds are strange, Chrome decides. "We've been taking too long," she adds after a few moments of awkward silence, where Ken is clearly trying to come up with an excuse for himself and Chikusa is staunchly silent.   
  
"I was going to come  _back_ ," Ken whines at her back as he follows along, his face not sure if it wants to crumple into a scowl or a look of despair. If he still had his tail, it's doubtful it would know what position to take either. "I was only looking!"   
  
Chikusa's voice slips in from the back. "He would have stolen a baby."   
  
"Shut up you stupid bird-brain!"   
  
Staying out of this particular argument seems like the wisest course for now, at least until Chrome can really figure out if Ken would have stolen a baby out of sheer curiosity , accidentally bit it, or simply left snot all over it from how much he would be sniffing. Instead, she focuses on what's ahead of her: a small building where smoke curls lazily from a hole within its roof. When she pauses by its entrance, she takes in the charms which have been left there to hang. One is a rough wooden carving of a fire, no doubt mean to feed the tiny little torch of a shrine that she knows must be nearby. Tangled up around it is a delicate little net, something a doll would use rather than any real person. There's no god of health, not yet. There's only Tsuna, burdened so much by the weaknesses of people and held up by their strengths, and herself. Chrome isn't a god of that sort. Sometimes, looking at such a charm, she half wonders if it's more meant to ward her away or curry her favor than any belief that she will bring any kindness.   
  
In that aspect, they're wrong on both accounts. The charms, whatever their purpose, do nothing... and she does carry with her kindness. It's simply not the kind that mortal people want.   
  
At least the building smells nice when she enters into it, full of a herbal scent to mask any signs of sickness, injury, or even death. It's a common thing, she's noticed. So long as the settlement is near enough such plants, they try to hide the ugliness of living with plants. Sometimes they're there for their beauty, but often times it's for this sort of purpose. Behind her, a sneeze knocks her out of her thoughts. Blinking, she looks over her shoulder and is greeted by the sight of Ken furiously shaking his head and rubbing at his nose. "There's too much plants in here," he grumbles, making a face. "What are they trying to do in here?"  
  
Somehow, she has a feeling that explaining the whole thing in depth would go over Ken's head, at worst, or he'd merely address it as stupid, if he did understand enough of it. With her hands curled up at her chest, Chrome tries for the most simplistic option she has available. "It.... makes mortals feel better, when they're sick or hurting."   
  
Taking another deep inhale through his nose and sneezing again for his trouble, Ken crumples up his nose in distaste. "If we help you with this, does that mean we're going to have to deal with this sort of thing  _all the time_?" he asks, sticking out his tongue. She nods. Ken whines some more. From behind him, Chikusa heaves out a sigh.   
  
"It doesn't bug me at all..."   
  
"Then  _you_  do it!"   
  
"I guess someone is going to have to..." Shoving past Ken and ignoring his almost literal bark of annoyance, Chikusa slouches further into the abode. "Which one is it....?" It's fitting that he'd want to get things done with as soon as possible, she supposes, considering that more effort is required the longer this goes on. With both of their attention on her again, Chrome turns away from them and steps towards one cot in particular. The person on it is a woman, one ankle bandaged and her skin having gone pale from sweat and pain. Hair sticks to her neck and face, a mess from having been ignored in attempts to help her. Chrome is no healer, not a person wise in how to mend a body, but she recognizes that which inflicts death easily enough. The wounds laying behind those bandages aren't the dangerous thing which ails her. That would be the venom which entered that way, and which fills her body even now. She's shivering, faint of breath, and Chrome already knows that her heart is wearing itself out into pieces. The only thing keeping her left in the world is Chrome's own time in getting to her. That's all it will take.   
  
What should she say? Should she say anything? Chrome decides otherwise as she stops before the cot. Slowly, she crouches down for easier reach, and takes a quiet breath. Chikusa and Ken are already watching her so intently; she can feel their gazes on her. There's no need to say anything. All she does, as she's done so many times before, is to reach over to press her fingertips to the woman's lips, and pluck out a soft blue pearl that shimmers in the dim light that filters in from the building's opening.   
  
The woman takes a final breath, rattling and soft, before going still.   
  
"That's it?" Ken asks after a beat of silence.   
  
Getting up to her feet, Chrome slips the pearl onto one of the many threads of her net. "That's it," she says quietly, watching as the pearl phases through thread and rests until it's suspended right in the middle.   
  
"So simple that even you can't mess it up," Chikusa says, and only wobbles a little when Ken kicks his thigh.   
  
Turning back to her, Ken wraps his fingers around one of her arms and presses close. "Let me do the next one!" he says roughly, fired up by something to prove. Well, it's not as if she wants to protest. If they can do this, too, then it'll make things easier. Even she has to admit that this is depressing work. So she takes the two of them away from that village, before the local healer can discover the trace of them, and to elsewhere. To a field, wide and dull green, where the few bodies littered in the grass are more than visible with how they disrupt the monotony. Two different groups watch each other warily from opposite sides, the corpses present serving as warning for how bad this can get, and Chrome pays no mind to them. It doesn't matter if this event was born from a valid reason, from self defense, from senseless murder, from an accident- it's all the same to  _her_.   
  
People are dead. Thus, she's here.   
  
Well, her and Chikusa and Ken, the last of which immediately bolts out into the field with reckless abandon. No doubt it would be more troublesome if anyone could see the wild haired boy with his cloak of wolf fur and his wide fanged smile. Chrome hurries after, suddenly feeling a small bubble of concern. Behind her, Chikusa takes his time. She's not sure if it's because he's unconcerned, or doesn't have the energy for that kind of feeling. As long as he's not causing any undue trouble, it doesn't really matter to her. Instead, Chrome slows down to stand besides Ken as he crouches down on all fours to the first body in the grass. An arrow has pierced through his torso neatly, blood blossoming out against cloth and sinking deep into the dirt beneath his body. He's right there before her, ready to be taken away. All he needs is a little help to be taken from the wet, shuddering breaths that leave his lips.   
  
Ken has fingers. He could do exactly as she did. Yet even as Chrome is standing there, watching him, he ducks his head with the hood falling over and past blond hair, and there's a wolf sticking what almost looks like his  _entire muzzle_  into the man's mouth.   
  
Very quietly, she makes a small distressed noise. Something that almost sounds like a breath of a laugh flutters out from Chikusa's throat.   
  
Ears perking up, Ken pulls his head away with a small indigo pearl held awkwardly inbetween his teeth. "What?" he asks, able to speak with a mouth entirely unrelated to the one holding the pearl. "Didn't I do it right?"  
  
Chrome doesn't say anything, not right away. She keeps her hands curled up close to her chest, looking helplessly towards Chikusa in silence. When he offers nothing besides his own dull stare right back, she glances back down to Ken. "You.... did," she admits, finally, because it's not wrong. He was able to draw out a person's soul. That's really all that matters. Carefully, she crouches down and presses her fingertips past the wolf's lips where they push against hard and wet teeth. The pearl is slippery in her hand but she doesn't lose her grip on it. She merely draws it free, and inspects it where it looks so small in her palm. Even at the slight distance, it smells of blood.   
  
When Chikusa does it, despite his differences to Ken, he does it in very much the same way. All it takes is a flurry of feathers, his head pulled upwards and the cloak fluttering around his legs, and there's a raven where a tall man used to be. All that's different is how he uses a beak instead of a muzzle and fangs. "Why do you do that?" she asks, watching while the raven rolls the pearl in his mouth and Ken crouches down besides him with a squint. "You have fingers, now..."  
  
Ken blinks up at her, tongue poking out from the corner of his mouth. "You said it was important," he responds, huffy in his worried defensiveness. "It's easier for me to use my mouth.... Or at least that's how I know best." Pausing, he goes back to squinting at Chikusa. "I'm not sure what this birdbrain goes with."  
  
The raven shifts subtly from foot to foot, and keeps the glimmering red pearl held firmly in his beak. "Beaks are more reliable than fingers," he answers quietly. "Things are always slipping in fingers. I don't trust them."  
  
Well. She suppose it makes a sort of logic, one she can't truly refuse. So Chrome says nothing more on it. Instead, she leaves them be, glad for the extra bodies in her work. Time passes quickly with Ken and Chikusa at her side, bringing home with them more than pearls. Ken brings the largest things, as a simple habit. Sometimes it's entire animal carcasses, their pearls strung all along his hip, and he practices constantly on how to skin them properly as humans do. Soon, her little cave abode by the sea is no longer so cold, hard, and empty. Instead, furs and leather give it warmth, and make it comfortable for her bare feet to tread. In perfect contrast to his partner, Chikusa has smaller things to offer, so unassuming that Chrome almost doesn't realize that they exist in their home before there's practically a trove gathered. String begins to loop from the walls and ceilings, colorless sometimes, and almost always blue when he bothers, although she notes brilliant cheery yellows on occasion. Little beads can be found in more variety, and just about everywhere, too. It seems as if whenever she moves something, a stray bead or six can be found beneath it. They seem a lot more beautiful looped through the strings, which Chikusa gets to on the days where he has only enough energy for little things like that. Shiny rocks, dried plants, bits and pieces of humanity that have been left abandoned or forgotten.... Chikusa fills up their home with all sorts of carefully organized clutter.   
  
The water begins to be filled up too, pearls soon masking the sight of her ocean from view.   
  
"It looks like an ocean of pearls instead of an ocean of water," Ken mutters, squinting out to the horizon. Before him, Chrome stays kneeling, her fingers digging into her clothing gently. "What do we  _do_  with all of them?"   
  
A good question: what  _do_  they do with all of them? While her ocean may seem endless, Chrome herself is merely a god. She has her limits, however greater they may be than those of mortals. If she were an Arcobaleno, perhaps this would be a different story, and she wouldn't have to worry about anything at all... But that is her parent, that is Reborn and any of the others. To do right by the many souls which lay before her...   
  
There is a solution, she thinks, although she's admittedly not sure how much of one. It's in the hands of someone else, after all. Still, it's all she can think of with the pearls cluttering together so thickly. Letting out a slow breath, she gets up to her feet, her hand brushing against Ken's. Ignoring the way he jolts a little, or how his face flushes faintly pink, she nods to him. "I'm.... going to see someone, okay, Ken?" From a small cluttered corner of the cave, surrounded by strings heavy with glittering beads and soft warm furs, Chikusa raises his head and Chrome nods to him too. For the past hour or so, he's been fiddling with a slicker hide than most, and she can only wonder what he's been planning to do with it. "You and Chikusa... keep working, alright? I'll be back soon." At least, she doesn't plan otherwise. Her only problem... is that she's not quite sure where to start looking.   
  
At first, for lack of any better ideas, she goes to his realm and waits things out, patiently, for a little while. Surely, her very presence would let him know that there is a visitor searching for him. Yet in the end, she waits for quite some time before she gives up, and ventures out elsewhere. Even as she sits and does nothing, she can feel her realm, her self, filling up as if being slowly drowned. The problem with her quarry is that he is  _everywhere_ , and nowhere at the same time. He's in so many little things which keeps the world turning, and a great few bigger ones too. To wander would get her nothing at all but what else can she do? Nothing.   
  
So she keeps searching, lost but not aimless.   
  
In the end, where she finds him... It's almost laughable how obvious it should have been from the start. Clouds thicker than sun's light and darker than moonless nights fill the sky. Vicious wind whips her hair around her. Wherever she steps, her feet sink into earth that's become wet and bloated from rain. All it takes is a turn of her head, fingers raking into her hair to push it away from her face, and she sees him.   
  
Dark, dark eyes crinkle in the way he smiles, and the world's catalysts offers her a hand up to the rocks he's comfortably seated on. "So you're Mammon's daughter, then, are you?" he asks, pleasant enough.   
  
Calluses are all over the palm she accepts, and Chrome grunts as she hauls herself up. The rocks are sharp, slippery, and certainly not comfortable. That's saying something, considering her own home and how it was before Chikusa and Ken decided to decorate it. "And you're Catalyst," she says quietly, curling her fingers down against the rocks in case she threatens to fall off.   
  
"Is that the only way Mammon introduced me?" Offense is utterly absent from his tone. Instead, he laughs softly, a sound that somehow makes its way past the crash of thunder. "They continue to not change at all. You may call me Fon, instead." Folding his hands together onto one knee, he continues to smile down at her. "But pleasant introductions aren't the only reason that you came to find me, are they?"   
  
Of course he would know. Mammon can follow the threads of desire, feel their tugs. So, too, must he sense the trembling sensation of change that's close to occurring. There's no point in lying most of the time, but that's especially true when someone already knows the truth. "I want to change," she tells him simply, no dancing around the bush. "As death is now... There's not enough room. I can't do anything more as I am... even with Ken and Chikusa's help. So..."   
  
"Do you think I could help?" he asks, amused as he rests his chin upon one hand. Around him, the wind plays with his long black braid. "Mammon doesn't like me enough as it is. I think this would only make things worse."  
  
Pausing, Chrome shifts one hand to her lap where it kneads awkwardly at her clothing. "Isn't," she says, starting a sentence before stopping with an awkward tilt of her head. It takes a moment before she tries again. "Isn't.... that what you want anyway?"   
  
Somehow, against all the clanging thunder and rattling wind, a beat of silence falls between them before Fon starts to laugh, ducking his face into his hand. " _Is_  that what I want?" he asks, genuinely delighted, and Chrome feels her own face heating up for reasons she can't entirely articulate.   
  
"I don't know," she murmurs, glancing away to the view stretched out before them. At the heights of a mountain, the world seems all the smaller than it normally does. "But... you want their attention, I think." This would be something that her parent would know better than anyone else. Chrome isn't Mammon, however. She isn't pure Desire. She's only an offshoot of it, born from a different kind of want from a different kind of source. Still, she knows it when she sees it, and she sees it coiled around Fon and through the braids of his hair.   
  
At least he doesn't seem offended. Shifting his face only enough so that he can glance at her from beneath his bangs, his smile curves out from behind his palm. "You're as forthright as they are," he chuckles. "That  _is_  one of their best qualities. Well, I'll gladly help the child of a friend, in this case." Slowly, in no particular rush despite what his entire self might make people believe, he reaches over to lightly touch the skin directly underneath her right eye. "I can't help you, Chrome. Not directly. If you want to change what you and your domain are as they are... then you'll have to use your own body for it. This is something only you can do, after all. Try to remember that."   
  
Ignoring the light touch against her cheek, Chrome blinks at him. "Do you mean metaphorically...?"  
  
All that answers her is a crack of lightning, and the following roar of thunder, both which blind and deafen her respectively. When her vision clears, the rock besides her is completely empty save for its slick covering of rain. Pursing her lips together, Chrome furrows her brows and glances upwards towards the sky that's still so heavy and tumultuous with the current raging storm.   
  
"I think," she informs it quietly, "that I understand why Mammon doesn't like you very much." Somehow, the wind flowing against the rocks and through the trees almost sounds like laughter.   
  
Regardless, it's clear that she'll receive no further information from Fon. With the words resting in her head, waiting to blossom into an idea, she returns to her dwelling by its endless sea and harvest of pearls. There's no reason to hide what she's been told from Chikusa and Ken, so she tells them plainly what Fon had said. Afterwards, there's a beat of silence, with Ken resting his arms and head against her knees and Chikusa sprawled crosslegged besides him.   
  
"So," Chikusa says fist, the word leaving his mouth with careful slowness. "Did he mean metaphorically...?"   
  
Ken blows his tongue, the crude and rough sound ruining whatever somberness had been within the cave to start with. "He probably meant literally!" Ken announces, so certain in his decisions. Perhaps, to him, it really is clear cut, and they're the only things making it so complicated. "But how do you even do that? Do you just..." Frowning, he looks back over his shoulder to where the pearls bob, shimmering and myriad, in the sea. "...lay in the water?"   
  
Heaving out a much put upon sigh, Chikusa nudges the wolf with one foot. "Ken... That's stupid."   
  
Chrome doesn't say anything to agree with him. Instead, she follows to where Ken's gaze had been before he'd torn it away to bare his teeth at Chikusa. She, too, stares out into the long sea of pearls that is most of her domain. Perhaps he's not wrong, although she cannot give up her entire body without giving up her entire sense of self.   
  
...But she can give up other things.   
  
Carefully, she rises up to her feet from the pile of furs that she had been lounging on, and Ken shifts off of her legs without needing to be told. There are many things in her abode, thanks to Chikusa's bird-like fascination with whatever has been forgotten or left behind. Now, it's helpful. Her bare feet step carefully around scattered beads, and avoid a long strand of rough rope. Her eyes are on a particular gathering of items, organized so carefully in a naturally made shelf in the rock walls. There, bones lie there all neatly lined up in rows after rows. It's never been a particular statement towards her, Chrome knows that. Chikusa is simply being what he is whenever he brings home a cracked off rib or picked clean skull. No matter what human form he takes, a raven's soul is what waits in him, resting in place of his heart. Standing on the tips of her toes, Chrome peruses the selection carefully for something in particular. She has no interest for long blunt femurs, or dull teeth. Instead, after a few moments of careful thought, she reaches up to slide her fingers around a long claw with a curved point meant for digging into flesh so neatly. When she runs her skin along its underside, waiting sharpness tells her that it has sliced through flesh just as easily. It's exactly what she's looking for.   
  
Their eyes follow her carefully as she turns away from the collection with claw in hand and walks over to the edge where water meets stone, her footsteps echoing throughout their home. When they stop, she's stopped, and draws herself carefully down to the ground. "Ken," she says quietly, her voice an echo in a cave. "Chikusa." There's no need to say anything else. Ken's own bare feet slap quickly against the stone, settling on her left side with no further questioning, and he leans around her curiously with his tongue still sticking out from his mouth. Chikusa is a softer presence, barely noticeable in the length of time it takes for him to go from the furs to her right side. With both of them besides her, Chrome reaches up and begins to slide the clothing from her shoulders, down her chest.   
  
Nudity has meant nothing to her, ever since she was first brought into existence. While her parent's shadowy and billowing garb would make others think otherwise, Chrome knows them to be much the same. There is nothing innately desirable about a body in its entirety, in plain view with nothing to hide it. Ravens and wolves should be very much the same, having even less desires for clothing than even the most relaxed humans would do. Chikusa sticks to that view easily. As Chrome disrobes, her clothing pooling around her waist, he watches her hands more than anything and spares no attention to her bare chest. At least, he spares none than what his eyes give him automatically. So it takes her a moment, with one half acting like she would expect, to notice that Ken isn't reacting nearly as smoothly. Pausing with one arm out of a sleeve that's now laying limply at her side, Chrome blinks at him and watches. Ken isn't very subtle, after all. Now that she's properly paying attention, it's easy to see the way he's fidgeting with his eyes flicking to her and then away, only to come back again to repeat the process.   
  
"...Ken?" At the sound of her voice, he gives a jolt. "Are you alright...?"  
  
"Yes!" he says, far too loudly, his face far too pink considering he's done very little at all in the last half hour.   
  
For some reason, Chrome isn't convinced at all. Chikusa clearly isn't either, considering how he deadpans, "Just say it's your instincts at work, Ken."   
  
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Jerking upright so hard that he threatens to fall into the water, Ken points an accusing finger at his partner, before swinging it down towards Chrome herself. "Just do whatever it is you were going to do, or say, or whatever it is!"   
  
Chrome ducks her head and, over her, she hears Chikuksa let out a long sigh. Still, Ken's right. She can't let herself get distracted. Focusing on the claw in her hand, Chrome turns it over and over for a moment. She's not sure if this will work... but she has to try. She has to follow her own idea of what the answer could be to Fon's cryptic advice. Carefully, she presses her free hand to her middle and stretches out her fingers, smoothing out her skin where it bunches up loosely. When she slides the tip of the claw into her flesh, blood welling up to drip down, a soft hiss slips out of Chikusa's mouth. Ken is a lot more verbal, his hand going to her shoulder before stuttering off.   
  
"Hey-!" The heat of him presses up against her arm, voice full of worry. "What are you doing!?"   
  
She doesn't offer an answer for him, not immediately. Instead, she continues to carefully drag the claw through skin and muscle, cutting open flesh until she can peel it away. The blood's pouring down her side, staining her pooled together clothes, and she ignores it. Ken bit her, once, in a time that feels a very long time ago. That wound had healed. Why wouldn't it, in the face of an injury that was only mortal in origin? But from herself, her own fingers digging in through it all? That's a different matter... A different source. With her fingers so deep in, blood staining all the way up to her wrist, she carefully feels past bone and veins. It takes a little bit, her fingers fumbling past the hard lump of her heart.... but soon enough she finds what she's looking for. She finds the firm swelling of her lung as she takes in a deep breath, feeling it deflate with her exhale. There... and, following the curve of it, there's the spot that connects to the rest of her.   
  
So deep in concentration, she doesn't notice how closely Chikusa has come until his chest is brushing directly at her back, along the other shoulder Ken hasn't yet claimed. Blinking back into awareness, she looks up at him. An unusual sight is resting upon his face: lips pressed thin, brows drawn low and tight, and something swims behind the normally dull color of his eyes. As much as Chrome doesn't know how to handle it, Chikusa doesn't seem to know what to do about it. Perhaps he sees the strangeness of himself in her own gaze, reflected right back, because the fingers which had been lightly resting against her shoulder remove themselves. Such an odd occurrence is more than enough of a pause for Ken to burst out once more.   
  
"You're hurting yourself!" His nails, near sharpened into the claws of a proper wolf, dig lightly into her other shoulder. Unlike his partner, Ken isn't keen on letting go anytime soon. "I thought you said you couldn't get hurt, so what are you doing now!?"  
  
Looking away from Chikusa, allowing him some amount of respite, Chrome leans closer against Ken's touch. Both of her hands are too occupied to do touch him in any other way, after all. "I said...  _you_  couldn't hurt me, Ken," she reminds him quietly, finally recalling to speak her own thoughts instead of assuming anyone else can read her mind. "But.... I can hurt myself. A god can hurt another god."  
  
Ken bares his teeth, as sharp as his claws and able to do a lot more damage. It's a good thing he would never think to hurt her, even if the damage wouldn't be permanent. "Is this because of what that Arcobaleno said!?"  
  
She blinks. "Ken... Didn't you say to take him literally?"  
  
"Not like this!!"  
  
Well, that much is true. His idea of the answer to Fon's advice was definitely quite a bit different. At the very least, it was less gory. Still, she shakes her head. "It'll be alright." Looking down, she ignores the keening noise that rises up out of his chest when she carefully slides the claw further into herself. "In the end... I think it will be fine."  
  
At long last, Chikusa speaks up with that quiet voice of his. "You  _think_."  
  
She can understand his incredulity, she really can. Yet she's too far now. With her hands bumping against one another, Chrome finds the part of her lung that connects to the rest of her body. She takes one last deep breath before exhaling slowly, making less of a target for the makeshift blade inbetween her fingers... and then begins to saw straight through.   
  
It hurts- it actually and truly  _hurts_. A gasp tears its way out of her throat, a lung trembling against her fingers, and she crumples in on herself while more blood gushes out from the wound in her body. The entire front of her stomach is slick with blood now, and red is smeared against her chest where her hands shudder and jerk. Besides her, both Chikusa and Ken grab onto her shoulders, alarm electric through their touch, but she doesn't stop. Instead, trembling so violent as to fall apart, she continues to saw until finally it slices right through. Something in her insides gets snagged, a little sting, and that doesn't matter so much as the part of her body that she can feel fall loose of its moorings. To say that nothing hurts anymore would be a lie, of course, and it would be just as much of one to say it hurts as intensely as it first did. The pain is there.... Only now it is dulled and pulsing. Distant. With great care, she slides the claw out before it can damage anything else in her body that it's not meant to, and her other hand soon follows suit.   
  
Her lung feels... soft in her grip. There's a weight to it, heavy and solid in her hand, just not as solid as she thinks it  _could_  be. Softness is the sensation which instead reigns supreme. It feels as though, if she's not careful, her fingers will plunge straight through it. Even stranger... is that she thinks she can feel her fingers, pressing down, and the cool breath of the sea's breeze against an organ that has only ever been nestled safely within her body. The outpouring of blood from her chest slowly shifts into a trickle, and then into an even slower growing stain. Her body will heal, eventually.... but not until it is certain that there is nothing which is meant to return to it.   
  
Around her, Ken's clawed hand slowly edges up from her ribs and up to where the blood dries stickily against her stomach. Comprehension is lacking in the way he stares at her, brows scrunched up and his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth again. Her smile seems to do nothing for his comfort. If anything, it only draws a quiet whine from the depths of his throat before his hand presses against her a little more insistently. Her self-inflicted wound gives a pang as he pushes her, forcing her onto her back where her hair splays out against the rocky floor. For a second, she's unable to understand, and only able to blink up at him... which soon becomes her blinking  _down_  at him, watching as he lowers himself closer to the ground on all fours with one arm on her other side. From her wound, the blood begins to slip backwards in accordance with gravity and no incentive to leave her again. Apparently, that's fine for Ken. There's still plenty that is smeared against her chest and gathering in the dip of her stomach. It's there, where the blood has threatened to soak into her clothing, that Ken begins to work.   
  
Where his tongue slides, it tickles, and Chrome's body jolts a little from the electricity of it. A part of her wants to press up onto her elbows to watch him better. The moment she tries? A low growl rumbles out of him, shuddering into her waist, and she relaxes her limbs against stone once more. He eases up where he's pressed against her, a low breath that makes wet skin tremble, and laps up the blood some more. It's truly a thorough cleaning where not an inch of skin is left abandoned. He even makes sure to suck at particularly troublesome spots, mouth wrapped close into her skin, and Chrome shivers, heat fluttering through her stomach. It's slow going as he tends to her, nose nuzzling into skin, and he only pauses when his mouth is near to her chest where the wound still lays jagged and sore. Gently, he flicks his tongue out, running it along the first bit of open wound, and looks up to her. His chin grazes against her with the action, and he's half on top of her now with his chest bumping into her knees. As their eyes lock, he freezes up... and begins to very quickly go red.   
  
Chikusa breaks the silence. "Ken... Seriously?"  
  
Bristling at the none too subtle and exasperated judgment, Ken jolts upwards onto his knees. "That's how you fix injuries!" he yells, voice hitting a little too higher- higher than the ceiling of their home, even. "You have to clean them, to make the blood stop!"   
  
His attempt at defense only earns a dull blink from Chikusa, who reaches up to graze his fingers against the side of his temple and into his hair. "Sure," he says quietly, with the tone of someone who is very plainly not actually agreeing. "Having Chrome lay against the ground while you get on top of her... is helpful."   
  
As if realizing what position he's still technically in, Ken almost trips over himself in his haste to get onto his feet. Down on the ground, Chrome finally pushes herself back up into a sitting position as well. Only then does she realize how close Chikusa had been to the whole thing, directly on her other side where he'd barely had to move so that she could lay down. Somehow,  _that_  is what begin to make  _her_  blush, too. Even as she's caught up in her own thoughts, Ken is still yelling. "You're making it sound bad!"   
  
"...I don't have to 'make' it sound bad... because it was all on its own."   
  
"Shut up, shut up!"   
  
"No."   
  
A fight is two seconds away from breaking out, at this rate. Carefully placing her still warm lung onto her lap, Chrome glances over the palm of her hand. Blood is still smeared all over it, from the wrist down to where it coats her fingernails. Despite the amount of time Ken had taken into cleaning her, it hasn't dried too much, with plenty of it as wet as when she'd first pulled her hand out. Looking up, she reaches towards Chikusa's face before the two of them can make their silly argument any worse than it already is, and both fall silent at around the same time. Tearing his eyes away from Ken, Chikusa blinks at her quietly even as she leaves red fingerprints along the curve of his jaw. Silence wraps around the two of them for a moment, the air having gone almost completely still. She is the one to break their frozen states, leaving streaks up to the corner of his mouth where her fingers stop. "You can do it too," she tells him quietly, aware of how anxiously Ken's eyes are flicking from him to her in something almost like anticipation.   
  
As he so often does, Chikusa gives no answer immediately, whether through his words or through his expression. All he does is stare back at her, eyes as deep and unreadable as oceans. It takes a good few seconds, perhaps even a full minute, before he finally shifts his head to the side. His lips are so soft and full against her fingertips, able to be dug into even as she does nothing at all. Slowly, he parts them, taking her fingers into his mouth. His tongue curls around the very tips first, cleaning them in a way entirely different than how Ken had done it. Certainly, Ken had attended to her with care. Chrome would never suggest otherwise, knowing that he had gone slow where he usually preferred to rush. Yet, still, Chikusa is different. As much as he's slow, and methodical, he also only uses the very tip of his tongue to flick blood up from against her skin. Centimeter by centimeter, he takes in more of her fingers, until he has nearly the entirety of her first two pressing into his throat. How he doesn't choke on them, Chrome can't say. It's only when he's apparently satisfied with the work he's done that he pulls back, lips pressing down to roll over her knuckles. With her fingers shiny and slick now with his saliva, he tilts his head to the side to focus on other parts. Mouth held wide open, he presses his tongue out to clean her palm in very much the same way as he had done her fingers, only with less of it pressing completely into his mouth. Even his hand rises up, fingers delicately bracing her wrist. How long it takes for him to be satisfied.... It's hard to say. eventually, he finishes, pulling away with his lids half shut and his eyes dark.   
  
Suddenly, his gaze flicks to the side, and Chikusa gives the faintest of snorts. "Ken.... Seriously." Blinking, Chrome turns her head to look at the wolf, and finds him with his legs crossed, his face brilliant red, and his hands shoved inbetween his legs as if to block the sight of something. Well.... 'Something'. She has a pretty good guess of what it is. Being called out only has Ken go all the redder.   
  
"I don't want to hear it from you, you dumb bird! You were just as bad. I saw what you were doing to her fingers!!"   
  
"....Didn't you start it first... with how you were shoving your face against her...?"  
  
With the way the two of them are, Chrome has no doubt that they'll be bickering for ages. That's alright. If anything, that will let her work undisturbed, and Chrome turns her attention away from the petty arguing they're indulging in. Instead, she looks down to the lung on her lap, and readjusts her grip on the claw she'd used to force open her chest. In contrast to that, carving a jagged split down the middle of her lung is far easier. The pangs of pain are a lot more distant than when she had severed the organ from her innards, and her hand doesn't falter in cutting it in two. At some point in the midst of her work, her wolf and raven fall quiet, and their eyes watch her carefully as she severs the last clinging bits of the lung so that it can be separated completely. The claw truly is a bloody mess when she finally allows it to clatter down onto the stone floor. Far more messy than her fingers had been even fresh out of her own body, in fact. Taking each half of her lung in hand, she looks up at them both. "Here," she says quietly, holding the parts of herself up to them. "These are for you."   
  
For a second, neither of them move, and their eyes stay locked on her hands, on what she's offering. It's no surprise to her that Ken is the first to move this time, either, his claws brushing against her skin when he accepts the chunk of flesh. Chikusa soon follows, his touch as faint as a breeze. There's no turning into wolves or ravens this time around. No. They stay as they are before her, human in form even if not in spirit or in mind, as their mouths fold over the soft, pliant meat. They partake of her in the same way as they'd partook of her blood, soft, almost reverent, even when Ken digs his teeth in harder to tear a part of it away. Soon, all that's left of her lung is the smears of blood on their palms, and the fading ache in her chest. Slowly, her skin begins to knit itself back together again, and Chrome has to insert a finger into the hole to keep it from closing completely.   
  
Softly, Ken makes another nose of distress in the back of his throat. "We weren't enough?" Chikusa asks, his eyes dark and the faintest smudges of a frown turning down the corner of his lips. Even for him, quiet and seemingly dull as he is, there is some pride in her raven.   
  
"It was enough for you," she tells him and Ken both. "Now, for the things that happen in the future... You'll be enough for whatever happens." If she's weak, or overworked, or just doesn't want to do anything, her raven's wings can soar even farther and her wolf's fangs can dig all the deeper. But for her? There's more she has to do.   
  
There's an offering she has to make to the source of strength at a time of weakness, when one's own power is not enough.   
  
When she arrives in the gently burning fields of Tsuna's realm, her clothing has been pulled up to her shoulders once again, and her chest aches underneath it from yet another thing that has been plucked from its proper moorings. For Chikusa and Ken, a lung split evenly between them had been the exact right amount to go into their stomachs. Perhaps if she had given them anything more, they would have twisted and changed, no longer themselves at the core. For herself, she needs something far more substantial, far more  _meaningful_. So it's wrapped tightly in a leather bundle, which is tied within another string of leather, and wrapped up tightly. She can only hope that is enough to keep all the blood still drenching it from leaking out.   
  
Perhaps Tsuna smells something in the air, however. He comes out to meet her, halfway through the fields, his burnt hands kneading at the sides of his clothing. "How've you been doing?" he asks after a moment of fumbling the words under his breath. "Chikusa and Ken have been taking care of you alright, haven't they? Or is it the other way around..."   
  
Mouth twisting a little in a way that's not entirely a smile, Chrome ducks her head down. "I think it's probably both," she says. As much as she's been the one to teach them how to function in the world beyond the one they once knew, they've in turn been the ones to keep closer to her, and she thinks of Ken's lips against her stomach or Chikusa's breath at her knuckles. They'd both been so concerned when she had parted her own flesh... so that means that if she's open about what it is that she plans to do, then Tsuna would have a worse reaction. Hadn't her own stoic raven even reached out to her in worry? Chikusa is possibly one of the most quiet types she knows, with his emotions locked away deep within his chest... and Tsuna is the exact opposite. Even before her feet had set foot on soft soil, she'd already come to her decision.   
  
So she doesn't tell him what it is that she holds in her hands. All she does is look up again and say simply, "I have something I'd like you to burn. Please."   
  
His brows finally give into his natural state, crumpling together as he stares at her. "What is it?"  
  
"Something that needs to be burned."   
  
Exasperation, this time, is what washes over his face even as he tries to smile. "That... doesn't tell me what it actually is..."   
  
In a way, Chrome's been hoping that he wouldn't press so much, but maybe that's been foolish of her. Tsuna cares so much, and is so incredulous of things that seem even a little unbelievable to him. It is, perhaps, in his nature to question even when he'd rather turn his back to the matter. Chrome would rather not lie to him, if she could get away with it. Perhaps she doesn't need to. "A sacrifice," she says at last after musing over the problem in her head, under his warm eyes. "I... asked one of the Arcobaleno for advice."  
  
Tsuna interrupts almost immediately, jolting forward with his hands raised up in worry. "It wasn't Reborn, right?"   
  
"No...." She knows better than to deal with Chaos, at least for a matter outside of his self. Still, that has her blink. "Did.... you ask him for advice once?"   
  
His smile is still weighed down with exasperation, but now there's an edge of sheepishness to it as well. "It was how to swim... So he put me in the deep end of a pond..."   
  
"...Did you learn to swim?"  
  
"I mean... I guess..." Shaking his head rapidly, messy hair flopping all over the place, he leans in closer. His hands are still as scarred and warm as ever when he lays them atop hers and the parcel she carries. "Anyway, that's not important. What did you need advice about?"   
  
"...The souls of everything.... There's too many of them." Her thumb worries at the twine which wraps her package so securely. "My realm can't hold all of them.... So I have to make it a little stronger... Somehow. I asked Fon, and he said this is what I should do." At least, his words taken literally are what she thinks she's to do, and she can only hope that they have been heard the right way. "So..... Burn it, please."   
  
As her fingers worry over leather and twine, Tsuna's own worry over her hands in turn. "I mean," he says after a moment, uncertain and small before her, "I can try. But, I mean, are you sure it's just a sacrifice that will work?"   
  
No, not just a sacrifice... One of the most important kinds. If she tells him that, he'll definitely say no, however. "Let's try anyway," she says quietly. "If only to see." Perhaps that is enough to convince him in the end, her own desperate attempts, and Tsuna bites at his own lip. It takes him a second before his fingers slip under hers, wrapping around the small, soft object that's only as large as one of her small fists. It's not much, and yet the most important kind of thing.   
  
"You'll want to stand back a little bit," he warns, taking a few steps away himself. "I mean... Just in case." Born of fire, born of water, the two of them could truly hurt one another if they aren't careful. It's never bothered Chrome, regardless. She thinks she could survive a stray lick of Tsuna's flame. The ache of her chest says she could, and a whole lot more. Still, she cares for him and the eager way he's been with her. More than that, she respects him. If he asks her to not be so near to him as he does this favor to her, well, it's the very least she could do. A distant feeling of swelling fondness goes through her when his expression softens in relief. Yes, a few meager steps is nothing compared to that. With her no longer in any danger, he turns away from her and takes a long deep breath.   
  
Behind the cracks of his hands, ruined by the depths of his care for people, light begins to flicker into existence before bursting out so wildly. From above his brows, dead center in the middle of his forehead, a small and almost trivial-looking scar parts just as easily to allow his burning crown to grace him. Rarely has Chrome seen him like this. Rarely has there been any reason for him to be like this. She's awestruck, honestly, at the way his eyes turn hot amber, and almost his entire demeanor changes into something almost not befitting such bright flames. They lick the edges of the package she had given to him, aching to take it, but Tsuna doesn't rush things. Instead, he slowly parts his hands from it, and the fire stays, curling around it in shapes so dancing and beautiful that one could be forgiven if they thought they were harmless. That, in the end, is Tsuna's fire: soft and beautiful. Captivated, Chrome watches as he tilts his head back with the package rising ever higher as his hands stretch out to the sky. For a moment, the package stays there, warm and untouched and whole...   
  
And then it devours everything.   
  
Chrome watches, and her heart burns away.  
  
When there is finally nothing more for the fire to eat, everything turned into ash that's carried away by the wind, the fire ebbs away from Tsuna's forehead and hands. He lets out the same breath that he'd taken in not a moment before. His eyes are back to being normal brown when he looks at her. "Alright, uh... I guess that's done with...?"  
  
Nodding her head, she starts to take a step forward. "Yes, that's..." Chrome doesn't finish her meager sentence. Instead, the world swims and she goes pitching forward. Distantly, she hears Tsuna's alarmed shout, and, the next thing she knows, she's being cradled in his arms.   
  
"Chrome!" Blinking her vision back into clarity, Chrome looks up at him. At some point when she couldn't pay attention, she's ended up being carried away. When did Tsuna start moving? It's impossible for her to tell. "What happened!? What as in that sacrifice!?"   
  
Kindly, she waits until he's back in his home and he's put her on his bed. "A part of me," she says once Tsuna has removed his hands from her. Unsurprisingly, he makes a high distressed noise that warbles out from the back of his throat. "It's alright. I already gave parts to Chikusa and Ken."  
  
"It's  _not_  alright!" he bursts out, once he's gotten control of his voice once again. "Aren't you hurt?!"  
  
Sometimes, his concern can feel so overwhelming. Chrome doesn't know how to handle it when he gets like this. Mammon's care is distant, trusting her to do what she wants or what she needs to. With Chikusa and Ken, they're much quieter. Tsuna is all flames down to his toenails, however. He doesn't know, she thinks, how to do  _anything_  without a lot of fire to it, whether that is being anxious or being caring or being protective. Even as she doesn't know how to deal with it, her head ducking down a little, Chrome can't say it's a bad thing.   
  
It's why her heart had to be set afire by him, and no one else.   
  
"I'd be hurt anyway," she finally murmurs down to her lap, "if I didn't do something to improve my domain." Carefully, she reaches over to nudge her fingers to where his hands are curled up tightly in the sheets. They're so dry, leather-like instead of soft. "Sometimes you have to do that."  
  
A moment of silence passes between them before Tsuna sinks down against the bed with a moan, his forehead bumping into her legs as he buries his face into the sheets. "You still should have  _told_  me!" he whines, voice muffled.   
  
"But... you would have held yourself back."  
  
"Still!" Raising his head upwards again, enough so that he can look at her with those large brown eyes of his, he says, "I always want to know if I'm doing something that intimate or painful to you. I want to know in case things go  _bad_. It's not right to keep me in the dark..."  
  
Maybe... he's right. Maybe this wasn't fair on him, even if it was easier on her. Chrome rubs at his skin idly, thinking about it. She is Desire's daughter and so the wants and longings of people are something she knows even if her domain is in darker areas. In the grand scheme of thing, no desire is really equal to the others.... But this isn't part of the grand scheme of things. It's important to her, and was important to Tsuna, and is important to Chikusa and Ken, too. In the small scheme of things... Their desires are just as important as hers were.   
  
The moments pass in silence, for a while, his head resting against her leg, before she speaks. "I'm.... I'm sorry." Finally, she shifts her gaze to peer past her hanging hair, and meets his own surprised stare. "...You're right... I should have told you."   
  
Something about his expression, raised eyebrows and befuddled blinking, hints that he wasn't expecting her to agree so easily, or so soon. "Oh," he says, still a little stunned and unsure of what to say in return. "Yeah. You should have." A second's pause, and he uncertainly adds, "Thank you?"  
  
That's exactly like Tsuna... thanking her for something, for simple acknowledgment. Chrome's mouth twists a little, as unsure of what to do with it as much as he is with his words. "Thank you," she says in return, because she has more to thank him for. For a moment, they only sit there, staring blankly and awkwardly at each other.... before laughter begins to bubble up lightly in the air between them. What else can they do, the two of them? They can only laugh at each other, and at themselves, for all that which they fumble through.   
  
It's okay. Fumbling is fine, she thinks, so long as they stay by one another's side while doing so.   
  
Tsuna doesn't let her leave for a long while after that, fussing too much over her and keening at the rapidly healing scar that splits her chest right in half. Only when she's completely healed, not even a trace of marred skin, does he finally ease up a little. There's no wiping away the concern from his expression as he escorts her to the field outside his house again. "Is that the end of it?" he asks, fingers still wrapped daintily around her wrist. If she tugged, surely he would let go of her. Chrome is sure of this.   
  
She doesn't tug, and she doesn't hide. Instead, staring back at him, she answers honestly, "No.... There's still one more thing I have to do." Tsuna opens his mouth, but she cuts him off before his feelings can be voiced. "Chikusa and Ken will be there with me.... So you don't have to be. You shouldn't... since you'd only get more upset."   
  
"You don't think I'd be just as upset waiting here....?"  
  
Chrome shakes her head. "You'd be working yourself up," she says quietly. "But if you saw it happen.... I think it would overflow. And... you'd be upset even worse." Possibly traumatized, she thinks, especially with Chikusa and Ken as they are. If Tsuna had been there to see Ken licking blood off of her....   
  
Yes. Definitely traumatized.   
  
Regardless of her good intent, there's no telling what will come from Tsuna's fidgeting frame.... so a breath of relief eases through her when he finally sighs and slumps in place. "Then... When you're done, and when you're feeling well enough to do it.... Can you come see me? Just so that I can see for myself that you're okay."   
  
"....Yes. I can do that." With what she's asking of him, it's in fact the least she can do.   
  
When she returns home at long last, flowing over her seas of pearl, Chikusa and Ken are sitting on the cave floor hard at work. They're not the only things sitting on the floor, either. On the hard stone, away from the nice leathers and furs, something peeled and bloody lays there. Even as she sets a bare foot onto the edge of her home, she can hear her two companions bickering.   
  
"I told you to hang it up so that the meat would drain, Ken...."  
  
"Aaaaaah, shut up, you dumb bird! I want to see you finish that, first!"   
  
"If you're going to watch, can't you at least finish stringing the pearls together while you do it..."  
  
"That's too finicky, and boring!!"   
  
"But this is more interesting to you..."  
  
"Yeah, because it's for me!" Ken barely has those last words out of his mouth before he's straightening up from where he's been settled in front of Chikusa, twisting around to see her. If he had his hood pulled up over his head, his ears would be perking up. "Chrome!" He scrambles up onto his feet, racing towards her eagerly. Even as he almost stumbles to a stop, she's peering around him to see what exactly it is that the two of them have been working on. Sprawled there on Chikusa's lap is a long stretch of short, smooth fur that Chrome can recognize as belong to that of a seal. On one side of him is a knife, sharpened so much so that it could cut through almost anything. In his hands is a needle which is still carefully strung through a part of the skin. In the shape it's in, it takes Chrome a moment to realize exactly what it is he's holding. Ken's cheerful voice is only confirmation when he says, "Do you like it? Kakipi figured out he could make another cloak for me, so that I can be something different than a wolf!"  
  
Well, there's a mystery even stranger than what Chikusa is doing. "Kaki...pi?" Chrome asks, tilting her head to the other side with a few wide eyed blinks. Chikusa sighs.   
  
"...It's... some sort of nickname that he's come up with for me... I don't know how.... Wolves never make any sense."  
  
"It makes perfect sense," Ken dismisses easily before looking to her again with an expectant grin. "So did you go do what you said you needed to do? We're done now, right?"  
  
Now there's the question she was never going to be able to run from... And one she  _shouldn't_  run from. Not answering her wolf right away, Chrome ventures around him until she can sink down onto the rugs where Chikusa is had at work. Ken follows, ever loyal, and exchanges a puzzled glance with his partner. "You can keep working," she softly tells the very same.   
  
"I'd rather not." Despite his deadpan response, Chikusa continues right where he left off to form a proper hood for his partner to wear. His knife cuts, his needle connects, and Chrome watches his fingers do what they do best for a little while.   
  
After a while, she finds it within herself to speak. "There's one more part of me I have to give up," she says, watching as Chikusa's hands go immediately still. At her side, she feels more than anything how Ken leans in close. Her imagination can easily provide an idea of how his face must look, twisted into displeasure and anxiety. She keeps talking, because she must. "I gave a part of myself to you two... So you could keep gathering souls without me. I had to give a part of myself to Tsuna, so that I could be a little stronger... And I had to get a little stronger for this, I think." Turning her head to look over her shoulder, Chrome surveys her seas and how thoroughly the pearls of the dead clutter it. "I have to give a part of me.... to here."   
  
"But aren't  _you_  here?" Ken growls, a whine hitching it a little higher. "I thought that's how it worked!" Nearly falling over with how fast he goes, he turns his attention to Chikusa again. "That's what you said!"  
  
No answer comes from Chikusa, too preoccupied as he is with frowning at her instead. His silence is as much of a demand as anything else that could possibly leave his mouth. "There's different parts of me," she says quietly. "A hand isn't the same as a foot, and those aren't the same as an ear. So.... Even if 'here' is 'me', it's still not the same." Her fingers twist in her clothing. "If... that makes sense..."   
  
"No," Ken answer immediately. The way he says it so fast almost makes Chrome smile. "But...." Huffing with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, Ken looks away from both of them. "...You're probably just going to do it anyway... No matter what we say." Across from her, Chikusa ducks his head down and resumes his work. It's an agreement in its own right.   
  
Considering how she plunged a claw into her own chest before their eyes, Chrome knows why they think this way. It's not a thought without foundation. Once more, she thinks of Tsuna's words to her. "If you weren't there with me," she answers slowly, aware of how neither is looking at her still, "then... I don't think I would." From her side, Ken finally turns his head to peek back at her. Chikusa isn't so easy; he continues working on the hooded cloak for Ken with only a brief second's worth of a pause. That's alright. As long as he's still there, listening to her, then that's the most she can ask for. "But.... If I don't do this... Then I don't think I'll last long as I am." What is a god that cannot do their duty? Is there a place in the world for such a place? The Arcobaleno are the ones who can simply exist as they are, doing nothing. She isn't like that. With the thoughts of the dying and prayers of those still living cluttered together so thickly in her head, Chrome isn't sure she can even afford to do something like ignore her duty, or what she needs to do. "I'd just... rather do it with you two."   
  
Even with his head only partially turned, that's more than enough for Chrome to watch how the back of his neck and tips of his ears begin to nearly glow a brilliant burning red. Chikusa isn't nearly so easy to read. He only stays quiet for a while longer, so it's a surprise to her when he's the one to break the silence this time around instead of Ken. "How will you give a part of yourself like that?" Letting the needle fall loose, he inspects a part of the cloak a little more closely. "Or.... where, rather."  
  
Well, it's a good question, at least. Near them, the hole in the cavern wall that leads into the depths still beckons with its dark shadows, but she ignores it. Her gaze ventures back instead to the softly lapping waves that stretch out behind her. "I think," she says, "where the problem lies would be best." To her ocean of souls, too full, too close to bursting.   
  
Perhaps Chikusa isn't surprised, because all he does is sigh and mumble under his breath. "Then I guess I should finish this..." With one last snip of thread, he drops the needle into a pile of clutter before recklessly flinging the cloak right at Ken's face. Ignoring his partner's startled yell, muffled only slightly behind the cloak, Chikusa leans back on his hands. "There. Done."   
  
"You could have given me a little warning, you stupid raven!" If there's really any aggravation in Ken, it certainly doesn't show in the gleeful bounce of his voice or the way he excitedly scrambles up to his feet once the cloak has been pulled away from his face. The wolf's hide that he had been born with, carried with him into even this life of gods and spirits, is slid from his shoulders. As it pools around his feet, warm and earthy, he's already tugging the seal's fur up and over his head. It's a little darker, this new skin of his, and yet it fits him perfectly as he squints up at Chikusa with an excited wiggle. "It fits!" he announces proudly, although it doesn't sit properly on his head- more from his own fault than any of Chikusa's. Eagerly, he drops down to his feet and hands again, crawling over his wolf's skin until he's nearly nose to nose with the other. "I didn't think a bird like you could actually do it.  _You've_  never had any reason to sew things before."   
  
Blinking slowly, Chikusa moves his hand to sharply tug the hood down into its proper place, and a seal is practically on his lap then, with his thumb on top of its nose. Ignoring Ken's startled bark of a noise, he says, "I'm not you. I pay attention. Of course I could do it."   
  
Perhaps it's time for her to intervene. "If you two are ready..." Rising to her own feet, she watches as Ken awkwardly flops over one of Chikusa's long legs so that he can maneuver himself roughly back to the rest of the cave that  _isn't_  Chikusa's lap. With the quiet exasperation of someone who has had to live with this for a much longer time than he's probably been alive, the raven weathers it. Chrome wishes she could be a little more detached herself instead of awkwardly clasping her hands to watch the seal flap along. "Do.... you need help...?"   
  
"No!" His flippers hit the stone particularly hard, now that he's reached it. "I can do it on my own!"   
  
"Just ignore him..." Rising to his own feet now that he's free of a large animal on his legs, Chikusa shakes his head. "That's what I do when he gets stubborn like this..." With those words said, he slides his hood over his head, and raven wings extend to take flight. Both of them follow after her as she steps off the edge of their cavern home. For her, here, the rules bend and break to her desire, and her desire is to walk on air unhindered. Chikusa needs no such allowances, his wings lifting him up neatly, and the pearls part for Ken's new body as he slides past them down into watery depths. On the surface, the pearls ripple from his movement, trailing after her loyally.  
  
When she comes to a stop, it's a great deal away from the only solid land that exists here, where the cave and its meager warmth are only a dot on the horizon. High up in the air, Chikuksa circles patiently. Dark eyes peer from inbetween the pearls below her, much more anxious and aggravated than his partner could ever show. "It'll be alright," she tells Ken, although she knows that it must not look it as she raises the sharp claw up higher. It's still as keen as when she first used it to dig out her lung, and then her heart. Her torso and all the flesh there has given more than enough in her pursuit of strength, however. There is no need to plunder that place any longer. No, it goes higher than her stomach, higher than her chest, and she would be a liar if she said her hand isn't trembling when she presses the claw's tip near her eye where her eyelid parts. Yet no matter if it is the truth, it still can't be allowed. She'll need a steady hand for this, steadier than anything, and so Chrome breathes deeply in and out. In and out. In.... and out. All the while, there is a point pressing into where her eye rests against its socket, and she cannot dare to close it to hide the fact from herself. Greedily, selfishly, she looks inside of herself for the bit of burning strength that rests, steaming, inside her water-born self.   
  
This is the only reason she can do this. It is the only reason, she is fairly sure, that she will survive it.   
  
She can't let her nerve fail her now, nor can she let that flame in her go out. So, steeling herself-   
  
Chrome plunges the claw in.   
  
For a second, the world burns white, burns red, and she  _ceases to exist_. There is nothing but blankness, nothing but pain, and she doesn't know how she returns to herself there atop the sea. She doesn't know when she's crumpled into herself, gasping, face wet with blood and tears both. Beneath her, a pearl becomes pink with her blood splattering onto it, only to become more and more crimson with every drop. Her tears aren't enough to dilute it. For a moment, she wobbles, the world all out of order with one eye blinded- but she can't stop here. Even with the pain. Even with Ken keening in the water, in the pearls. She can't stop. So, gritting her teeth, Chrome continues, carving through vein and flesh and whatever else is in her way. With pain so electrifying, rattling her entire world in red and white, Chrome doesn't notice when the last tenuous bond is severed. All she notices is the wet weight of something falling into her waiting cupped hand.   
  
Breath rattling throughout her chest, body swaying, Chrome looks down at it. It is a disgusting sight, wrong in how it has been pried from her even worse than lung or heart. Blood is still pouring from her socket, staining her arms, her dress, and that one single pearl beneath her out of hundreds. How this is, how she notices, such thoughts have no place in her head. All she can think of is turning her hand to the side, watching her own eye roll and fall. In the water, with the pearls, it fits right in.   
  
She's done.   
  
She should go home, Chrome blearily thinks. She should return to her home, with Ken against her and Chikusa besides her. Yet no matter how much she wills her legs to move, demands her body carry her to where she needs to go, it does not listen to her. All she does is stand there, swaying and with the world awash in white and shades of red.... and she collapses.   
  
The last thing she feels before slipping into unconsciousness is the feel of arms wrapping tightly around her before she hits the water.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Fingers, soft as feathers, trace along her forehead and down to her cheeks, dragging her back into distant awareness. Chrome doesn't realize she's awake, at first. It doesn't  _feel_  as though she's awake. Sounds, voices, fade in and out of clarity, and there is only bleary darkness even when her eyes peer open between the heavy weight of her lashes. Still against her cheek is that soft touch; it takes her some time to realize she's being stroked. Not a bad thing, certainly. It feels rather nice, if she's being honest, and Chrome finds herself in no hurry to rush into awakeness. Instead, she allows it to come to her, in bits and pieces. Smell comes first, of all things, telling her of dark dank places where the water's scent gathers thickly, and it reminds her faintly of the ocean only watered down. Next comes her hearing, filtering in stronger and stronger. Ken's voice, fittingly, is what breaches through first.   
  
"-even smell like her, down to all the parts."  
  
Someone else, a voice she's never head, laughs low and soft. It's a funny little sound, coming from deep within the chest but popping upwards into the air like a bubble. "So I take it you're this invasive with everyone you meet, then," the stranger says. "I suppose I'm not the special exception."   
  
Chikusa's voice is sudden and as quiet as ever, only it's a lot louder so close to her face. "You're too loud. You're going to wake her."  
  
That laugh again. "Your fussing won't, Chikusa?" it says, playful. "Will you ever fuss over me like that?"  
  
A kind of embarrassed silence floats from Chikusa's direction, and Ken barks out a laugh. Judging by the direction, he must be right near the stranger. "He smells like her, Kakipi!" he teases. "Don't you want to check?"  
  
At long last, Chrome finds enough strength in her to open her eyes. At least, that's what she thinks up until she opens her left one, and her right side remains completely and utterly black. Only then does she realize there's pressure wrapped around her head, pressing against one temple and into her cheek. That's right. She can't open her eyes, plural, because she no longer has two to spare. There's only the one, seeing the world through bleary vision that slowly clears up. Chikusa is only a blob at first from where he's leaning in so close to her, and she watches as his hair sways when he turns to look at her again. A blink, and all the details come back into focus: the ruffled mess of his dark hair, the sore redness which underlies his eyes. "I told you," he says quietly, although he doesn't look at anyone but her. "You woke her." His fingers stroke down the side of her face again, the half that isn't half covered in bandages, and curl along the curve of her jaw.   
  
It's a quiet moment, intimate and sweet, and immediately ruined by Ken propelling himself into her other side. "Chrome!" His cry is pressed straight into the side of her throat as he buries his face there, fingers curling against the many furs and blankets layered over her.   
  
Chikusa makes an annoyed sound on her other side. "Be careful, Ken..."  
  
His warnings seem to go mostly ignored, although Ken isn't being rough. He's simply insistent, his nose nudging against her skin and into her hair. "You're so dumb! That wasn't anything like how it happened with us! You went falling!"  
  
Making words happen in her throat and on her tongue... It seems as if she's forgotten how to do all that for a moment. The act of merely talking requires a moment for her to remember, and she slides one arm around Ken as she does so. He needs some sort of comfort, she thinks, although she's not particularly good at giving it. "I'm okay," she says, when the whole process finally comes back to her. After all, isn't it true? Isn't she there with them?  
  
Judging by the way Ken pulls away a little so that she can see his bared teeth, he obviously disagrees. "There was blood everywhere!" he yells, bristling. "That's not okay!"  
  
"It's not," Chikusa agrees, murmuring still.   
  
"I'm here," she reminds them, looking from wolf to raven. "And you were there with me."   
  
It's only five words, and yet it's five words enough to draw up a vivid crimson flush all across Ken's face and up to the tips of his ears. Chikusa is a lot more subtle, tipping his chin down against his chest. His gaze flicks to the side. "We weren't," he mutters, "the only ones there with you." That's enough of a prompt for Chrome to finally look past Ken, and towards the stranger who has been waiting so patiently through all of this.   
  
Her own eye, in another's face, stares back at her.  
  
A man sits there, sprawled sideways with one hand propping himself up, and he is very nearly her double. He seems a bit taller than her- well perhaps a great deal taller- and the structure of his face is somewhat different, and his hair is a bit more blue, blue as the sea.... But he is still an image of hers, down to his body. His hair is longer than hers, draped lazily over his shoulders, and frames a lazy smirk upon his lips. Perhaps what is most striking isn't that his left eye is that of her right, but that his other eye is deep, blood red.  
  
That, too, she knows is from herself.   
  
Carefully, Chrome begins to push herself up so that she's sitting. Around her, the world spins a little, and then is stabilized by two presences on her sides. Ken nudges her carefully upright, more gentle than his rough demeanor might ever betray. Opposite of him, Chikusa stays steady and still so that she can lean against him. Ignoring the not-a-stranger in their midsts, Chrome looks around for a better idea of where she is. It's similar to the part of her home that she's most familiar with: a cavern with sturdy dark rock. Unlike what she's familiar with, however, there is no opening leading out to open sea and shimmering pearls. Instead, there is only one exit that can barely be seen past the array of torches that have been gathered.   
  
It is a single large hole, with stone steps leading upwards.   
  
Besides that, and the torches, there is nothing else. Everything she has been laying in must surely have been brought from upwards. So with nothing else to distract her, Chrome looks to the not-a-stranger. "Who are you?" she asks plainly, blinking and then marveling at the fact that she can only truly feel the movement with one side of her face.   
  
There's that laugh again. It's quite distinct. "Shouldn't you know?" he asks, scooting closer until his and Ken's shoulders are brushing. The wolf doesn't seem to much mind.   
  
"Not really," she replies, no hesitation holding her back. He's close to her too, now, but she minds perhaps even less than Ken ever might. "I know what you are.... but 'who' is something different."  
  
A long low hum this time. As far as Chrome can tell from the glint in his eyes and the smirk on his face, he's pleased with the answer. That doesn't stop him from saying, "Aren't they the same thing in the end? You can't know who you are if you don't know what you are, and what you are relies greatly on who you are."  
  
Chrome blinks at him, unimpressed. Although she knows it's probably not  _quite_  true, she can't help but wonder if the red of his eye is symbolic of another person who likes to speak in roundabout ways. "Even if a seed grows into a tree, it's still not a tree when it's a seed." A pause, and then she says decisively, "Mukuro."  
  
Finally, that smirk flickers away from his face, and he raises his eyebrows. "What?"  
  
"That's who you are. Mukuro." Ducking her head a little, she peers up from beneath her bangs and smiles faintly. "If you want to be." Names aren't things that can be forced, or, at least, they shouldn't be. Even when Mammon had desired her to have two names, one a secret for the two of them to covert, it had been with the understanding that it was how it was- a secret for  _both_  of them. For something like that, it could only work with her consent too, although she had been too young, perhaps, to truly put to words what it all was. It's just as important that he, too, makes the decision to accept the name she is offering to him.   
  
Only a brief pause goes between them before he huffs out another low laugh, just one all on its own, and glances away with a flip of his hair. "Well, one name is as good as any other," he says breezily, which isn't quite true. "I suppose I'll accept it." Pressing his hand down against the stone, he pushes himself up onto his feet and rises smoothly upright. "Well, since you're awake, these two can stop fussing. If you need me, I'll be up above." With that said, he turns away from the three of them and begins to walk away, disappearing from the light of the torches and into the shadowy hole in the wall.   
  
"I like him," Ken announces after not even a minute has passed, and Chikusa heaves out a quiet sigh.   
  
"You've known him for four hours... if that..." Adjusting Chrome tentatively, she can feel him adjust his chin against her hair so that he's staring right at his partner. "This is because he fed you some food, isn't it..."   
  
The heat radiating from Ken's face could probably be felt all the way back on mortal earth. "Shut up! You liked him because he gave you food too, you dumb bird!"  
  
"Did I ever say that...?"  
  
"You  _blushed_." On the side opposite of Ken's furious blushing, Chrome can feel Chikusa jolt lightly against her at the accusation. As if sensing that he's on the right trail, Ken leans around her so that he can stare up into her face. "He blushed!" he repeats again, as if he has something to prove to her in particular. "Mukuro touched his hair and complimented how well he was taking care of you, and so he let him carry you down here and he blushed!"   
  
"Ken," Chikusa says tightly. "Shut up."   
  
"Not when I'm winning!" Something suddenly occurs to Ken, however, and Chrome can almost imagine his ears pressing flat against his head as he looks at Chikusa with mingled concern and aggravation. "Wait, you never blush when I do anything!"   
  
Chrome has a sneaking suspicion that if this conversation is permitted to go on, Chikusa might die from the awkwardness of it all, and that's assuming that he doesn't take flight to somewhere far away until Ken stops. Considering she's seen how far Ken will go, leaving a trail of his own blood behind him, Chrome knows it would be a doomed effort. So she speaks up instead. "I'm glad... that you both like him."  
  
Ken's gaze shifts away from Chikusa once again, and he falls lightly onto her covered legs with a grunt. "Yeah. He smells like you, even if I think he's not anything like you."   
  
Slowly easing up at her side, Chikusa gives a slight nod. "He's... a very different person from you." A pause, and Chikusa asks, "You said you know what he is." It's probably a question that he's been wondering for a long while. Chrome can't be sure if he asked Mukuro himself, but it couldn't have been a very satisfying conversation if he did. After all, he's already shown himself for having a flair for the dramatics and dancing around an upfront answer. For someone as bluntly honest as Chikusa, that must be quite annoying.   
  
There's no point in hiding it, not when she's decided to be more honest in turn with them. "He's a part of me," she answers simply. "And... the other kind of death." For a second, she pauses as she tries to decide how to describe his exact function in the world. "Death isn't... bad. It's not an enemy for anyone to fight."  _She's_  not an enemy for anyone to fight. "It just... is. But... There are different kinds of deaths. Slow ones... or painful ones." Chrome tilts her head to the side. "Some would think that just dying is both of those things.... so I guess he represents that sort of fear, too, even if people know that there's something waiting for them past their life." Then again, she supposes, lives left slumbering within pearls that bob on the water, day in and day out.. Perhaps that's not a kind of life at all.   
  
Hopefully, this solution of hers will be exactly what they all need.   
  
Quiet moments pass the three of them by, thoughts churning in her companions' heads, before Ken speaks up. "So he  _is_  you," he says simply, and she can hear Chikusa's quiet sigh. "So we were right not to worry about him."   
  
It's simplifying the issue a whole lot, and cutting out even more of it, but he's not  _wrong_ , either. She nods. "That's right." Digging her fingers into Chikusa's shoulder, she braces herself and rises up to her feet. Her knees tremble as the furs crumple past them, an ache she can't ignore, but this time she stays upright. "We should go see him," she says quietly, tossing her head to the side a little so that she can try to get rid of the hair that is hanging uncomfortably past her face. Before, she'd never had any problem with it, but that's changed. With the bandage around her head, now everything seems out of place and uncomfortable.   
  
"No," Chikusa says plainly, rising up onto his own feet as well. Her fingers slip from his shoulders, instead going to dig into the feathers of his cloak. "You aren't recovered yet..."   
  
"We'll carry you!" Ken announces simply, cheeks a little rosy even as his arms wrap around her waist. Before she can offer her thoughts, let alone any protests, he's heaving her up and away from Chikusa's side to be cradled in his steady arms. Alarmed, she wraps her own about his neck, even though there's no danger of her slipping out of his grasp. His cheeks only grow all the pinker. "This way!" he says, ducking his head down and forging off towards the stairs. Behind them, Chrome can see Chikusa slowly shaking his head before he begins to shuffle off after them.   
  
When they emerge upwards to the home that Chrome knows, light temporarily blinds her. All she has is the feel of Ken against her body, inbetween her arms, and she holds on tight with no other option but to trust him. When her vision finally clears, she's being settled down besides a more-than-familiar face at the edge of the waters. She barely notices how Ken hurries off to get some blankets and furs for her. Instead, she looks out again to the sea of pearls- as untouched and still full as when she'd started all of this.   
  
"It's still the same," she tells Mukuro, plopping against his side. It makes things a little difficult of Chikusa who sighs before just dropping a fur onto her shoulder. It would be a little much to ask him to do things completely, she supposes. "All of the pearls are still here..." Pausing, she glances up at him from the corner of her one good eye. "Most of them."   
  
His own, burning red still, crinkles in amusement. "They can't all vanish," he drawls, adjusting his arm so that Ken can shove his way up against his side all the easier. "They're still here, and they've still needed to be collected."   
  
Folding his way down to her own side, Chikusa nods slightly. "While you've been asleep... We've been getting them."   
  
Well, that won't work at all, and she frowns down at the pearls. What is she to do now? She has three other pairs of hands to help her... Surely there has to be some sort of answer. Her and Mukuro make two, two sides of death, two ideas of it, and there has to be an answer there somewhere. What is it, what is it, what is it... She didn't do something wrong by bringing Mukuro into the world, she thinks. Certainly she feels stronger, in some way, by having given up parts of herself to strengthen what remains. There's another answer that she's not seeing...   
  
Kind deaths. Painful deaths. Two sides of the same thing. Is there another aspect, another half, that she's not paying mind to...?  
  
It finally hits her after a moment of staring down at the pearls, her toes brushing against them, and she sighs. "Oh," she murmurs. "Maybe it was that obvious."   
  
Mukuro laughs gently at her, although maybe that's merely is way. Does he understand because he's born of a part of her, or because it really was so obvious all along? "I would think so," he says, although that explains nothing. She's quickly learning that there's no such thing as a stated fact with Mukuro. "So then..." Getting up onto his feet, he extends his hand to her. "Shall we?"   
  
Ken peers around his waist, cheek pressing into his hip, and squints as Chrome pulls herself up. This time, she's a little steadier. "Wait, what are you doing? Are we going somewhere?" Chikusa rises almost right after Chrome, and she can tell in his silence that he's asking very much the same questions.   
  
"Cleaning up," Chrome says quietly. "Chikusa, Ken.... We need your help getting all of it done."   
  
In all the time that she's been existing, the pearls truly have gathered up to a frightening amount. They weigh heavy in her hands when she pulls them up from the waters, bright and shimmering with the lives they hold. Across from her, distant, she can tell Mukuro is the same. Is it heavier for him, or exactly the same? While they are of death, of desire, they are still their own people. For all she knows, perhaps it's even lighter in his hands. To her right, Chikusa's feathers only make up the tiniest speck against the darkness of the night sky as he flaps his wings to raise the pearls higher. All that leaves is Ken. There's no rising above the water's surface with wings, or divinity, not for him in his seal fur cloak. Instead, she can tell how he takes the strings of pearl inbetween his teeth just by the tug against her hands, and he leads them all across the sea. At some point, the divine becomes the natural, the mundane, and it's no longer her waters that they carry the trailing net of pearls. It's merely the waters of the world, where all sorts of lives dwell in, so unlike her own home. Ken swims tirelessly for them, diving through the waves while his teeth never once let go. Through seas, through rivers, past all sorts of places until the water begins to grow thin and his fins dig through mud for a while. It takes some time until the water becomes deep again, and by then it's in the form of a lake where a waterfall gushes and trickles from high atop a mountain.   
  
This seems like good enough a place to stop. "Ken," she calls, the pearls bunched up tightly against one another for the journey inland. "You can stop now. We can-"   
  
Predictably, Ken doesn't listen to her. In fact, instead of listening to her, all he does is waggle his hindquarters excitedly in the face of the sheer ragged surface of the waterfall... and propels himself out of the water to dig himself into rock so that he can scramble upwards. Chikusa's exasperated sigh can be heard even over the sound of Mukuro's laughter.   
  
Ken lasts about a third of the way up the mountain, doing admirably especially once he's past the parts of it which are completely vertical or completely slick with water and ice. It's as the sound of his scrabbling body can be heard from probably even the base that Chikusa sighs again, and Chrome feels the weight of the net fall against the ground. Only a few seconds later, and a raven is flying inbetween her and Mukuro, navigating the mountain air as if it's nothing. She can't  _entirely_  be sure what it is that he tells Ken, only that there's a bark of protest, some grumbling, and then the part of the net from further up lifts all the higher. A second after that, and something is shuffling beneath the pearls, a little lump that sniffs and growls. It doesn't take long for Ken to pick up where Chikusa had been a moment before. Craning her head back, she can see the shift from seal to humanoid, and Mukuro laughs some more across from her. "I can see this is going to be an interesting existence," he says, eyes glittering.   
  
With Chikusa at the helm this time around, proceeding up the mountain becomes a much smoother process. There's no difficulties of the ground for a creature with wings, and there's no difficulties of the earth for a creature that's since moved past a mortal existence. He takes them all the way to the peak, where it feels as though she could reach upwards only a little bit and brush her fingers against the night sky...   
  
That kind of indulgence, if it ever has any place, will have to come later. Allowing Ken and Chikusa to drop their share of the net, she waits patiently for Mukuro to come take his place besides her. Between them, the sides of the net that aren't being held seem to spill off endlessly off the two sides of the mountain, bright against the snow and glimmering against dull rock. In the dark of night, against what should be common sense, they all seem to glow. It's the highest she's ever been in the mortal world, in a place she's never ventured to with Tsuna or Mammon. There's only herself, and Mukuro at her back, Chikusa against her shoulder, Ken at her feet....   
  
It feels as it should be.   
  
There's no need to talk about what comes next. Not with her and Mukuro. Instead, with the net firmly in their hands, they toss it up, toss it skywards, and it nearly  _floats_  off of the mountain and all the ground connected to it. They rise up, up, up into the sky where they almost hang for long beautiful moment... and then, finally, the string gives way. After so long of bearing the weight of all the lives that have held onto it, it allows them to go. At first, it's only one- a single solitary pearl streaking down through the sky and leaving a trail of blazing color behind it. Then another, and another, dozens at a time that light up the sky with their hue instead of quiet darkness.   
  
Atop the mountain, Chrome watches souls return to earth where they belong, and smiles.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"What," Mammon deadpans, their gaze focused over Chrome's head, "is  _that_."   
  
For a second, Chrome isn't entirely sure what's being asked of her. There's a few things that have changed since Mammon took their eyes off of her, letting her explore her divinity and self with casual carelessness. They could be referring to Chikusa lazily sprawled out against the variety of furs that have gathered up so warmly in the cavern opening, turning some strange white and long splinters inbetween his fingers. Maybe it's Ken, leg twisted about so that he's able to scratch at the back of his neck with his toe claws even though he's not in the form of a wolf.   
  
Eventually, however, she realizes that sharp bright indigo eyes are focused right over the top of Chrome's head and towards Mukuro's smug presence leaning against her back. Oh. "He's..."   
  
Mukuro interrupts her, speaking directly towards the tiny petite figure that's staring up at him with such disdain. "Are you to tell me that one of the great Arcobaleno is aware of  _nothing_  that has gone on with their daughter's life?" If Mammon is disdainful, then Mukuro is surely mocking in his own vicious little way. Chrome isn't entirely sure where he gained such spitefulness; she can say for a fact that it wasn't from her.   
  
Lips curling, Mammon turns their nose up at him as if they're much taller than they actually are. "I know more than  _you_ ," they say, voice as cold as the depths Chrome can remember awakening to. "I've been more than aware of the pets she's collected-"   
  
"Hey!" Ken objects, his foot falling from his neck. Chikusa doesn't even bother to look up.   
  
"-and I've been more than aware of how much she's wanted." With only a hint of teeth showing from inbetween their lips, Mammon crosses their arms. "That doesn't explain what  _you_  are."   
  
Mukuro flips his hair over his shoulder imperiously. "I'm a god, obviously."   
  
"Not likely." His eyes narrow at the immediate and blunt dismissal. "More like a parasite."   
  
"That's quite an insult coming from someone as small as one." From the corner of her eye, Chrome is aware of Chikusa finally raising his head to keep a proper eye on the proceedings. When she flicks her gaze to the other side, Ken's claws are braced against the stone floor as if to propel himself forwards. As for her? She's more than aware of how chilly the air has gotten, thick with tension as it is. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that both her other half and her parent clash in such a way. Arcobaleno are the very fabric of the world as it exists, and yet, at the same time, she knows the strength that her and Mukuro both benefit from. Regardless who would win if a fight broke out, so many people would lose- gods and mortals and probably even a couple of the Arcobaleno alike.   
  
There's only one thing to do.   
  
Stepping away from Mukuro's weight, Chrome steps forward to take Mammon's hand and just.... walks away. There's no explanation on her hand, no words, just her hand around Mammon's as she guides the Arcobaleno away from the cavern. Even without looking, she can imagine well enough the befuddled, almost  _offended_  look on Mukuro's face. The way Mammon looks back at him with a small satisfied smirk admittedly helps with the mental image. "Where are you going?" Yes, definitely a trace of being offended somewhere on his face. She can tell by his tone.   
  
"To talk," is all she says, walking over the edge of her cavern and over clear water. For the first time in ages, it's more water than pearls, with only a few of them dotting the waves here and there with pale strings connecting them to shore. Her shore. It's a much better look for it.   
  
"Okay," Chikusa says dully, the direction of his voice hinting that he hasn't moved even the slightest bit from where he is against the floor. "Bye." He'll be able to keep things calm while she's gone for only a few moments, she thinks. Chikusa has always had a much cooler head than his partner, and even cooler than Mukuro although her other half tries so hard to seem distant and implacable. So she can walk out to the distant waters until home is a good distance away.   
  
Mammon seems to have cooled off with the distance and time taken to move, although there's still contempt in the curve of their mouth when they look back to her cavern home. "Honestly," they grumble. "Why couldn't you have just gotten another pet to fill up that home instead of desecrating the body that I crafted for you?"  
  
Oh, so that's why they don't like him with the intensity that they do. Following their gaze, Chrome presses the side of their head onto Mammon's shoulder. They really were made mirror to their parent. Her head doesn't have to fall far at all to rest their against them. "If it was only me, whole," she muses aloud, "then I don't think.... I'd be unaffected anyway. I'd be far worse than this." Now there's only a little bit of emptiness in her torso, and a bandage wrapped around to hide the empty socket that once held an eye. It's a small price to pay in comparison to the things that she got in return.   
  
Surely Mammon has to know this too. She can tell that they do, glowering in sullen silence. Funny that they have nothing against Chikusa and Ken, who ate of her body, but instead Mukuro. Chrome isn't entirely sure she understands the whole reasoning herself. "Still," Mammon says. "It had to be a creature like that."  
  
"Yes," Chrome says simply. It had to be someone like Mukuro. She wouldn't have had it any other way. After a few awkward seconds, Chrome tilts her head to look back up at Mammon. "...I don't think he knows my other name."  
  
Sure enough, she watches sharp tension begin to lose all its edges, starting from Mammon's shoulders and flowing down the rest of her body like mist slipping down inbetween cliffs and crags of a mountain. "Of course he wouldn't," they say dismissively, tossing their head to the side sharply. Within the depths of their hood, Chrome thinks she can see her parent's hair flip back a little further behind their neck. Perhaps it only slid. In the darkness of desire, where things sometimes get murky, it can be hard to say. "He was only born of your eye, not your ear." Even if only a little bit, Chrome can't help the smile which flickers onto her face for a brief moment. If they're in a good enough mood to make jokes, then Mammon surely has to be in a good enough mood to not try and murder Chrome's other half, no matter how much they might not like him. "Still, no doubt when he even faintly learns of its existence, he'll become insufferable in trying to learn it. I know his type."   
  
As far as Chrome can tell, Mukuro's type seems to be almost Mammon's type exactly: greedy, dramatic, and self-centered. That probably explains a lot of things. Yet knowing better than to say such a truth out loud, Chrome merely shrugs. "He might," she says, not particularly willing to put any bets on the future when she herself would never have foreseen gathering up beasts of the wild for company or carving up her own flesh to be offered up. Just because it's more likely to happen than not means nothing. "I guess.... We'll have to see." Pausing for a moment, she tilts her head to the side as if that can possibly help her see a little better into Mammon's shadows. "....Are you angry?"  
  
Silence is Mammon's only answer for a long moment. Chrome isn't sure they'll answer at all when, at last, they heave out a sigh and the combative way they've crossed their arm relents, hands swinging back down to their sides. "You did well for yourself under the weight of so many desires pressing under you," they admit, even as their eyes are still narrowed down in the direction where Mukuro dwells so far off. "But more than that, you had a desire of your own that you put forward first and foremost, going after it no matter what. For a daughter of mine, what could I possibly have against that?"  
  
From someone who's been so distant as Mammon has been, the words are quite the praise. Feeling her weak colored skin start to warm up in pleasure, Chrome ducks her head down with her chin to chest and winds her fingers together tightly. No matter how happy she is about it, however... "You do hate him," she points out quietly.   
  
"Oh, absolutely," Mammon answers without hesitation. "Still.... I guess there are unfortunate side effects to all desires." Their lip curls again, even as they twist away on their heel. "Well. I've seen all I've needed to, and you're not dead. I'll be taking my leave, then."  
  
Looking up again, Chrome blinks at their parent's retreating back. "Only this long?"  
  
"Only this long." Without looking back, Mammon raises a single hand in farewell. "Besides, I have to take care of one more thing that you seem to have forgotten to do while you've been preoccupied with the harem that you've been so admirably collecting." In the same instant that Chrome's face lights up intensely with the force of her blush, Mammon disappears in a gust of mist, and she's left to her own devices once more.   
  
Well, that's how they always are. It can't be helped. With her parent having taken their leave, Chrome turns on her own heel, and returns home to where she has no doubt that Chikusa is firmly holding Mukuro back from indulging in his own curiosity.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"-a scumbag who should never have been born, brought into the world by sheer luck-"  
  
In the depths of the tent, kept warm and light only by a single torch, Mammon looks like quite the phantom hovering over the body of a healer in prayer. Their hood hides all but the faintest outline of their nose and lips, and their cloak fades away long before it hits the ground. What makes the whole scene so much more amusing is the befuddled expression on the mortal as they deal with their own divine visit, those brows crumpled over a distant gaze as they try to listen. Fon laughs lightly into his sleeve as he steps further in, not minding when Mammon snaps their head to look over at him. "I thought that Chrome, or one of her companions, would be the ones to herald the arrival of that young new god.... but it looks like you've seized opportunity for yourself, haven't you, Mammon? I didn't think you would be so incensed."  
  
Leaving the mortal thoroughly ignored now, Mammon whirls on him, and he can see the barest hint of their feet touch the ground as their body solidifies in place. "Were you hoping for more?" they snap, not masking their annoyance or slowing their pace in their stomp closer to him. "It's one thing for such a parasite to come into the world, but he has  _your_  reek all over him." Coming to a stop before him, they have to tilt back their head to make eye contact. With the fire at their back, it's hard to make out the color of their eyes, but he swears he can see crimson burning in the shadows. "I should have known. Red's always been your color."  
  
"Aren't I allowed to help the daughter of someone I like...?"  
  
"No. And we both know you only do it to jerk me around." Reaching up, they try to snatch his long braid from where it hangs loosely over his shoulder. Before they can even touch so much as a strand, his own snaps out to fold around their fingers. Their hand is so tiny in his; he loves to marvel at it. Mammon clearly doesn't share his sentiments, considering the way their plush lips stick out in a sulky, aggravated pout. "You're insufferable."   
  
Still smiling his same old smile, Fon bows his head down to press his mouth against knuckles that would sooner bury themselves into his jaw. "And you're so cruel, treating me this way."


End file.
